


and we’ll find our way home (always)

by Laroyena



Series: Wandering Souls [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up, Happy Ending, M/M, Romance, canon character death and resurrection, damian-centric, dick's pretty much damian's dad, soulmate's first words are written on their skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7250152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laroyena/pseuds/Laroyena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Those in the League of Shadows must kill their soulmate. Damian Wayne arrives in Gotham City determined to make the al Ghuls proud.</p><p>(Very Batfamily oriented, Damian-centric soulmate AU)</p><p>Can be read as a stand-alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and we’ll find our way home (always)

**Author's Note:**

> So after the amazing reception I got for my first Batman fic, I decided to just go for it and write one all about Damian. Even if this fic was a huge struggle to write. That makes this technically a sequel, but should still be readable as a stand-alone (if you want some BruDick angst with a hopeful ending, [then that's the first one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7042231)). 
> 
> Since Damian's timeline was greatly affected by the whole New 52 reboot, there was even more gratuitous mixing and matching here. Even after all my research I'm sure I got some things really, really wrong, so please forgive me! Throw in the huge influence the _Son of Batman_ and _Justice Leagues vs. Teen Titans_ movies had on this and everything's jumbled together. Also hand-waved Wally's and Lian's death because WHY NOT

 

 

Damian Wayne hated his soul-word.

 _HELLO_ was written in bold and awkward English letters along the back of his neck. It felt like a brand: big and awkward and only really hidden by a flipped-up collar or a hood.

"Disappointingly mundane," Mother had sighed. It was the worst kind of soul-word, so commonly spoken it made finding the right target difficult. "The trick is to always be watching other's reactions. Always be ready to strike. Because the easiest time to cut that line…”

“…is right when you first meet them,” Damian recited dutifully. She beckoned with a hand, and he charged: vicious and quick and with no holds barred. Talia al Ghul twisted out of the way, and Damian couldn't help but stare enviously at the gray words curled in the middle of her chest.

Mother had soul-words worthy of an al Ghul. The minute her destined, dark-skinned woman had uttered that phrase, Mother had calmly drawn her sword and stabbed her right through the heart.

Because a true assassin had no connections to the world. Each member had only one tie that mattered, as Grandfather had intended: their loyalty to the League of Shadows.

 

\--

 

He was four when he first saw how transgressors were punished.

Two guilty assassins were forced to their knees in the middle of the courtyard, held down by guards before Grandfather in the balcony above. Damian stood silently beside him.

One guard ripped open the assassin's shirt, revealing the first black words other than his own that Damian had seen with his own two eyes. Black. They were _black._ The other captive had his shirt similarly torn open, and another set of black words stood out damningly from his hip.

 _Soulmates_.

“Despite your potential, such a breach cannot be excused,” Grandfather said. He carelessly tossed two swords over the railing, where they clattered before the pair. “Correct this wrong immediately. As our rules dictate, only one of you may live.”

“Great One—” the man pled, and his guard smacked him. He didn’t protest again.

The two drew their swords and faced each other. After a single breath, they struck.

Damian fought the urge to yawn. Their fight was tediously predictable, and held no interest to him until its very end. The man's endurance proved to be no match for his soulmate’s speed, and the woman pushed her advantage when he faltered.

She knocked his sword from his hand and held his chest down with a knee. Damian watched her lift her weapon and strike it down—

Down into her own chest.

Blood spurted out from the wound and all over the horrified man’s skin. Damian could _see_ the words on the man’s hip fading, graying out as his soulmate’s life-blood dyed him red. The woman grinned through bloody teeth and slowly looked upward towards him and Grandfather. She raised her middle finger and then collapsed— her own words disappearing into nothing.

The surviving assassin, blood smeared all across his naked chest, cradled her body and buried his head into her neck. Some of the watching assassins looked annoyed, derisive, disgusted.

And some others—more than Damian would have guessed—looked sympathetic.

It made no sense. She'd been _winning_ , and any rational assassin would have taken the kill to save her own life. Taking her life to save his was antithesis to everything Damian had ever known.

When he looked up at Grandfather, he was stunned to see Ra’s Al Ghul’s normally stoic face marred with a frown.

"That's enough. Damian, go back to your room," he said, turning heel. Damian couldn't help but look back at the gruesome display one more time. It was a traitorous thought, but one that flitted across his mind all the same: despite not understanding the emotions he'd witnessed, he _envied it_.

More than that: he wanted it.

 

\--

 

By ten, he'd outgrown that childish wanting.

Grandfather had raised him for the very purpose of inheriting his kingdom; of using his superb skill and charisma to bring the League of Shadows into the light. Damian was perfect in every way, except for the word on the back of his neck being black as night.

He'd correct that error soon— but not before he tracked down his Grandfather's killer and had his revenge.

 

\--

 

Escaping out of the Batman's car was easy. What he hadn’t expected was the silhouetted figure that followed him from the docks, smoking a cigarette and in no real hurry to catch him.

“Y’know, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me,” the stranger drawled when Damian stopped and swung his blade in his direction. The man tossed his cigarette onto the asphalt and crushed it beneath his boot. In the half-light, Damian could pick out the edges of a red domino mask. “’Cause it looked like you just jimmied your way out of the Batmobile.”

Damian didn't lower his sword. “I am Damian Wayne, son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul. Attack me at your own risk.”

The man seemed to freeze. “Bruce and _Talia_? Huh. Heard Talia got knocked up, but that was like... two years ago. You’re not some test-tube clone baby, are you?”

“Certainly not,” Damian snapped, and the man let out a strained laugh.

“Oh wow,” he said. “I really am losing it.”

Then he drew out his gun, clicked off the safety and fired a shot. Damian whirled in time to see several suspicious-looking goons scattering like rats behind him. Their leader lay prone in a puddle of his blood, a single bullet-hole dark between his eyes.

“That’s my cue,” the man told him with a wry grin. "And remember… I was never here.”

He reached into his bag and took out an incandescent helmet with no visor. Snapping it onto his head, he withdrew several guns from his jacket and vaulted off a railing and after his quarry.

Strange people in a strange place. The methodical manner the man had dealt with each vermin was quick, cold, professional. Kill before you're killed; that was Mother's training through-and-through. Damian was halfway ready to run after the man when he heard an ear-splitting scream from nearby. His hand twitched.

Damian may be a killer, but he only culled those he deserved it. He reluctantly turned and ran towards the scream, leaving the red-hooded man to the dark streets of Gotham.

 

\--

   
 

“It won’t be easy, Damian,” Father said afterwards, when Mother's ship finally disappeared into the foggy horizon. There was no need for Damian to stay in Gotham now that he'd had his revenge, other than the sheer fact that he wanted to.

He needed to, not just to fully succeed the Batman legacy, but to fulfill his promise to Grandfather. _HELLO_ was written in English; ergo, he was far more likely to meet his quarry in America than the Middle East.

As if he read his mind, Father said: "For you, personally, because we treasure these here, not destroy them."

And then Father was pulling his collar down, exposing his common-as-dirt soul-word like it wasn't a glaring disgrace to both his family lines. Damian's heart seized in his chest.

"I won't let you commit such a murder," Father said in a low tone, and for the first time Damian felt a sliver of doubt in his plans.

"You can't stop me," he shrugged Father's hand off and self-consciously flipped up his collar. "I have my ways. You have yours. Let the wretched world judge me for standing strong— I don't care."

He was lying through his teeth and he knew that Father knew it— but that didn't mean he was going to admit it out loud. He was an al Ghul. A Wayne. Whatever was thrown his way, he'd overcome. That's what he'd been born to do.

 

\--

 

He underestimated how many times he'd hear his words.

"Hello!" the store clerk said when the Wayne family butler, Alfred Pennyworth, had dragged a reluctant Damian for a clothes fitting.

"Hello," the barista in the local coffee shop said off-hand, too busy toggling with the espresso machine to see Damian's offended grimace.

"Hello," a toddler said as she stuck her thumb into her mouth. Damian bared his teeth at her and felt far too much satisfaction when she ran crying back to her inattentive mother.

"As if any of these simpletons are worthy of my blade," he'd seethed when Pennyworth raised a brow at him. For all his grievances with his new home, Damian appreciated the butler for his respect and honesty. That's why he let Pennyworth lead him to three more shops even after he surmised that his wardrobe was sufficiently stocked.

"If I may advise you, Master Damian," Pennyworth said in a dry tone while looking through a pile of apples. _Apples_. Damian had never willingly dallied in a market square in his life. "There will be many further cases of strangers speaking your word. It is a very common word."

"I _know_."

"You will have to rely on touch rather than sound," Pennyworth finished his selection and turned to face him. "People forget, but when your soulmate first utters your word, the mark will _burn_. And it will burn every time afterwards at their touch."

Damian hadn't known that. He brightened: this would make hunting his soulmate down far easier than he'd thought. "Thank you, Pennyworth. This is valuable information."

"You're very welcome, Master Damian. Now if you're quite done frightening small children, we shall head home."

Armed with this new knowledge, Damian begrudgingly accepted a life of hearing his word thrown around. But just because someone said them didn't mean he had to respond. He didn't care if his silence seemed rude. Social niceties were a pointless distraction, anyway.

In fact, it would probably be best if he didn't say anything in return: for some reason, the idea that his soulmate would look  _happy_ before he gutted her disturbed him.

No. Quick, professional, cold. There was no reason to inflict extra pain. Better she had no idea who her murderer could have been.

 

\--

 

For a manor filled with several people unassociated with the League, he'd yet to run across a pair of soulmates in close quarters. Father had no soul-words, as Mother had informed him, and Pennyworth's soulmate had supposedly passed many decades ago. The last mystery was Father's adopted son, who spent the first few days ignoring him after their tense introduction in the Batcave.

Clearly, Timothy Drake didn't understand what Damian's presence _meant_.

“Your plans to secure your portion of the Wayne fortune is misguided,” he declared after days of surveillance. Timothy Drake was a book-smart, not street-smart, which worked to Damian's advantage. “As the Drakes had been quite wealthy before their demise. I can only assume you’re after Father’s social standing. Unfortunately, as I am the true Wayne heir and you are simply an imposter, I suggest you forfeit the goal before you needlessly embarrass yourself.”

“What,” Drake’s mouth opened and closed. He hadn't even seen Damian approach. “You—I—What!”

Damian raised a brow. “Disappointingly inelegant.”

This seemed to jar the teenager into using actual sentences. He shut his mouth and threw Damian a scathing look. “I’m not using Bruce for his money or his—his _standing_ , you brat, I’m not like _you!_ Waltzing in here thinking you know everything—”

“I do know everything. Mother made sure to hire the best tutors around the world—”

“The same mother that’s slept with half the people in Gotham? Yeah, sure, great role model there—”

“Do not talk about her in such a manner!” Damian hissed, and then tried to claw off Drake's face. He got pummeled with a hefty textbook for his trouble, and their resulting fistfight left two bookcases upended and gave Drake a black eye. Damian sneered at the older boy's eventual retreat. Obviously diplomacy wasn't a solution.

Which left Damian's preferred, if less savory, method.

“What did you _do!”_ the Batman snarled after he’d rushed Drake's unconscious body to the medical bay. Damian was still processing the information he'd gathered. Gray words wrapped around Drake's waist, which unfortunately meant he'd survived the fall. But they also explained Drake's singular existence: his soulmate was dead. Father continued, “You almost killed Tim—what the _hell_ were you thinking?”

“I was proving myself,” he explained, chin raised. He wasn't sure what the problem was. “To take one’s rightful place, one must unseat the current occupant. Drake took the place of your son because you had none. Now that I’m here, he’s worthless.”

“Timothy _is_ my son,” Father said in a dangerous growl that had Damian stepping back. The man's entire posture screamed _the Batman,_ like he was facing off against a member of his rogue gallery and not his son. For the first time, Damian felt a sliver of fear run up his spine. “He will always be my son, no matter who comes before or after him—and if you threaten his life again, Damian, you will no longer be welcome in this house. Are we clear?”

Damian gaped at him. 

He miscalculated: he'd assumed Father's lack of a soulmate made him less attached to his peers, not more. Without the confidence that came with soul-words, Father seemed to cling even closer to those he cared about. Like Drake.

And because Damian craved Father's approval more than Drake's death, he raised his chin, "I understand. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

There was a tense pause, in which Father seemed to assess Damian and found him wanting. But the Batman was a hero, and so despite his obvious misgivings he nodded his assent. The pressure in Damian's chest lifted.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he repeated quietly to himself as Father swept out of the room. It infuriated him: he didn't _understand_. Soul-words were an enigma. A frustrating, irrational ball of _emotion_.

With an enraged cry, Damian slammed his fist into the floor.

(And if he visited Drake while he was recovering, despite Father’s and Pennyworth’s explicit instructions to _stay away_ , no one confronted him about it. Seeing Drake’s soul-words left Damian feeling strange. This teenager had what Damian had wanted his entire life, and Damian had almost _everything_. Drake should be happier because of it, not look so lost.)

 

\--

 

Dick Grayson, alias Nightwing and the original Robin, couldn’t keep his nose out of family business.

“You’re thinking of homeschooling him? Who’s going to be teaching the kid, _Alfred_?” the man shook his head from where he sat on Father's desk. Damian glowered at him from where he was sprawled in a chair.

Grayson had a bad habit of barging into the manor like he still lived there, despite clearly being in his late twenties and therefore a functional adult. Today he'd stopped by to check in on Drake’s recovery, compliment Pennyworth’s culinary skills, and waltz into Father’s study where he and Damian had been having a _private conversation_.

He didn't know what was more infuriating: how Grayson just parked his butt onto Father's desk like that was his god-given right, or Father letting him _get away with it._

Damian raised his chin. He wasn't sure how he felt about Grayson: on one hand, he had the good sense to actually pay attention to Damian when they spoke; on the other, he was an annoying _meddler_. “I have had tutors my entire life; I fail to see why that shouldn't con—” He yelped when Grayson just walked over to him and _picked him up_. “What are you doing!"

“He’s just like a miniature you,” Grayson marveled, enduring Damian's squirming and kicking before finally letting him go. Damian bared his teeth at the man, to little effect. “...a crazier you.”

“I’ll take the compliment,” Father said dryly, "and if not Alfred, than who? Tim's busy with school, and I doubt any of the Leaguers can take time off."

Grayson gave him a shit-eating grin that had even Damian feeling nervous. Father too, if his expression said anything about it.

"Dick..."

"What? I'm sick of space, Bruce, you know how bad I get if I'm up in the Watchtower for too long—"

"You don't have to."

"Why not? I'd love to get to know the newest member of our family," Grayson's grin widened, if possible, and Damian suspected that Father was being punished. For what he didn't know, but he took offense to being used as a bartering chip between them. Not that that stopped Father from reluctantly agreeing.

It took only a few days for him to revise Dick Grayson's description to an annoying, embarrassingly ridiculous _busybody_ who wouldn't leave him alone.

“There are four different species of fowl in that pond, not three. _Do_ keep up, Grayson,” Damian drawled as they strolled around the local park. Apparently, Grayson’s idea of being a temporary teacher meant forcing Damian out into the open air. Which would have been fine on its own, except Grayson seemed to be under the mistaken impression that Damian would be _interested_ in things. Which he wasn't.

The only bearable trip was their ride on the Gotham Metro Subway. Damian immediately shouldered his way to the windows and pressed his face to the glass, where he watched the dark tunnel lights zoom by. It reminded him of the tunnels at home.

“No cell reception,” Damian’s reverie was broken by Grayson muttering to himself. “No, of course not. Just send me an alarming text right in the middle of my lunch-date with Damian, Tim…”

Damian scowled and raised his voice above the train’s ruckus. “Cease communication with Drake at once. Father instructed you to look after my welfare only.”

Grayson stopped jabbing at his phone long enough to throw him a wry grin. “Damian Wayne, are you _jealous_?”

“No!” Damian barked out, horrified. “Why would I be jealous of that—that short, insipid fool of a boy?”

“Insipid what?” Grayson sighed. “Look, can you not be so hard on Tim? Kid’s had a pretty rough year.”

Oh yes. The gray soul-words. Poor Timothy Drake. Like every assassin ever hadn’t willingly done the same thing without even batting an eyelash.

“I fail to understand why Drake is so upset,” Damian voiced aloud, “He has not lost anything. He has gained his freedom. Without a soulmate to tie him down—”

“Damian,” Grayson said, because a few of the other passengers were giving them judgmental looks.

“—he is free to reach his full potential without distraction.”

“Soulmates aren’t _distractions_ ,” Grayson hissed in a quieter voice, leaning down so he could look into Damian's eyes. “We don’t _need_ them, that’s true, but our lives are better with them in it. R'as isn't right about everything—especially not this."

"You're brainwashed," Damian declared, even if a traitorous part of him whispered that Grayson might be on to something.

 _The easiest time to cut the line is right when you meet them_ , Mother’s mantra stopped that train of thought before it began. He clenched his fists. No. He couldn’t afford to think that way—not when Mother and the League of Shadows needed him to inherit the kingdom.

"Look who's talking," Grayson muttered, and yelped when Damian kicked him in the shin.

 

\--

 

Instead of accepting Damian's superior philosophy and embracing his freedom, Drake was clearly intent on falling into pieces. The teenager was the height of irrationality. Damian wasn't sure why Father continued to let him gallivant about Gotham City at night, not when he was so clearly compromised.

Their constant fighting didn't help things either, but they'd been left to their own devices for the most part. Until one particular row ended with Drake knocking him out cold, and Nightwing had pulled the teenager aside.

Drake apparently took that as an invitation to have a breakdown.

“I keep _seeing_ him everywhere," Drake ran a shaky hand through his hair. The other one curled around his waist protectively, like his words weren't already bleeding gray. Oh good, more of Drake's _soulmate angst_. "It’s driving me so crazy I can barely think. I can’t think, Dick! I’m going to get us all eaten by a—a space kraken or something, and Kon’s going to be so mad at me for dying in such a stupid way when I see him—”

“Breathe, Tim,” Nightwing coaxed Drake from his seat before the teenager began doing something ridiculous, like hyperventilate. "It's alright. It's okay. Look at me, you're _fine_. Want me to ask Alfred to make some cocoa?"

Damian couldn’t help it: he snorted. When Grayson's gaze snapped up to the alcove where Damian had been hiding, he knew he'd been made.

"Your constant babying is obviously detrimental to Drake's psyche," he called out, because there wasn't a point in hiding anymore. "If he was trained in the League's way, he'd have used his newfound freedom to achieve greater—"

"Shut up!" Drake suddenly screamed up at him, and Damian blinked. "Shut up, shut up, I'm so _sick_ of your awful ideas. R'as al Ghul was a monster and I'm glad I never had to deal with that _bullshit rhetoric_!"

"And what has _your_ rhetoric brought you?" Damian said coldly. "Blubbering and recklessness and Grayson treating you like a child?"

"You don't understand anything, you crazy psycho—"

"Tim!" Grayson snapped, pulling the shaking teenager against him. "Tim, you _know_ he doesn't know better, you can't take what he says seriously." And before Damian could smirk at Drake's contrite expression, Grayson whipped around and pointed at him. "And _you_ , Damian! Come down from there. We need to talk."

Which didn't go as easily as Grayson had planned, but the man seemed to be made of stronger stuff than wet-blanket Drake. 

“Release me at once, Grayson!” Damian snarled, voice as deadly as he could make it while he was strung up like a chicken. “I am Father’s only son! You are all imposters! _You_ are an imposter! And stop treating me like a child!”

“Then stop acting like one,” Grayson bit out, infuriatingly composed like he hadn’t just settled Drake into his room and then proceeded to chase Damian across the manor. Damian growled at him from where he hung upside-down from the ceiling. “Intentionally riling Tim up? Eavesdropping? Expecting things to just fall in your lap? If this is what you meant by ‘making it up’ to Bruce, I’d hate to see what _not_ making up meant.”

Damian wanted to argue back out of spite, because Grayson was right. But that would be even more childish, so he settled for glowering instead. Grayson just put his hands on his hips and glowered back.

That was how Father found them five minutes later.

“Why is Damian tied to the ceiling,” Father asked Grayson, though made no immediate move to help his _real_ son down.

Damian wriggled hard enough to yank the supporting hook out, which he was proud of, but ended up cracking his face on the counter below him, which he was not. It only assuaged his embarrassment a tiny bit when Grayson tried to help him up and earned a kick in the face.

"Damian!" Father's voice called after him sharply, but Damian had already fled. Discomfort crawled under his skin. He felt uncomfortably exposed. Childishly angry at Grayson for tearing his walls down, and then angry at being childishly angry.

He put his hand over his nape, as if covering his damning soul-word could stop his emoting. He wanted to cut that connection out _now_. Have it bleed gray so he didn’t have to worry about anyone or anything anymore.

Maybe then he could show Drake how happy he was meant to be. Lead by example, Grandfather had always said.

Sometimes, Damian missed him so much he could barely breathe.

 

\--

 

It took Damian hours to gather himself together and knock on the door to Father’s study. Father was sitting in a large armchair and brooding in front of a crackling fireplace; unfortunately Grayson, who still hadn’t gone home, was perched on a chair arm and resting his head on Father’s shoulder.

“If possible, I’d like to attend a school that allows me to live here,” he declared. He shot Grayson a withering look, and the man reluctantly put his feet flat on the floor like a normal adult. “Since I'm aware that Grayson is soon returning to this 'Watchtower'.”

“I told you,” Grayson said to Father, who just looked troubled. “Though I can always stay around longer, at least until Tim's in a better place...”

“I think Clark might actually cry if you don't head back," Father said dryly, "He's been trying to wrangle the newbies by himself for weeks.”

“Still?" Grayson groaned. "He’s left me _fifteen_ voicemails and he’s the one with x-ray vision! How can he keep losing three teenagers?”

“I can accompany Grayson to the Watchtower," Damian suggested airily, which succeeded in getting both men's attention.

"Absolutely not, Damian," Father said, at the same time Grayson said, "Ha, ha, no."

“Why not.”

“Because you’d hack into the mainframe and destroy the world,” Grayson said matter-of-factly, and had the gall to laugh when both Father _and_ Damian growled at him. “Alright, alright. I see everyone's kind of grumpy today. We’ll talk about your options tomorrow morning, Damian, how does that sound? Go get some sleep.”

Damian felt wrong-footed at Grayson's friendly tone. He'd been sure he'd lost the man's favor after their tussle that afternoon, but apparently Grayson loved bucking all his assumptions. He was about to exit the room when Grayson leaned over and whispered something in Father's ear. Which wasn't anything special, until he caught a glimpse of Father’s face. It was… soft, especially in the flickering light of the fireplace.

The Batman was cold and intelligent and immovable like steel. This face was entirely Bruce Wayne—soft and vulnerable.

Feeling embarrassed, Damian quietly left the room and shut the door.

 

\--

 

Trust his life to turn on its head the moment he began to relax.

 

\--

 

“Pathetic,” Mother drawled, tugging her sword out of the wall. “What a bleeding heart you are, Richard, to defend Bruce’s bastard son.”

“He’s yours too,” Nightwing grunted, spitting out blood. “Don’t _do_ this, Talia—I know you still care for him.”

That doesn’t matter, Damian wanted to scream at him from where he lay hopelessly on the ground. Nothing mattered to her—them—other than the League’s greater goal. These were soldiers who willingly excised their soulmates from the world; culling their children too wasn’t any trouble. It wasn’t _personal._

It had been his own choice to aspire to Father’s methods, after all. A selfish choice, perhaps, but one of the few he felt was his own. If Mother—no, Talia—couldn’t see that, well.

Perhaps there was a reason his parents had stayed apart for so long.

 

\--

 

Except then Father was _dead_. He was _dead._

 

\--

 

Grayson locked himself in Father’s room for two days. Drake pled with him outside those large wooden doors, everything from _Can’t lose you too_ to _Tell me, Dick, please tell me if they’re—I need to know_.

Alfred tended to all of them, but Damian didn’t want the old man’s care. He wanted to _destroy._

Damian took his sword out to the practice room and ruthlessly, methodically felled each and every dummy and contraption he could. He kept seeing it over and over again in his head: Superman arriving with Father’s body in tow, and Grayson stumbling towards them.

(“Bruce?” Nightwing had whispered, and was then clutching Father’s body to himself and burying his face into Father’s armored chest. That was all Damian could see before the Justice League members swallowed them both whole, one united front in mourning.)

He hacked at the equipment's shredded remains until his arm felt disconnected from his body and he had to either let the sword go or watch everything from his shoulder down disintegrate into ash. Then, with an angry growl, he kicked his sword across the room and leapt into the chair in front of the monitors. He turned on the news, needing to channel his aggression somewhere. Anywhere.

After two minutes, he stalked right back upstairs and banged on Father’s door.

He recognized the man terrorizing downtown Gotham, because that fierce red helmet really was one-of-a-kind. Except the person he tried to strike down was a different creature than the one Damian had faced his first night: more violent and psychotic and completely uncontrollable. Grieving, because Father was _dead_.

“Jesus Christ, Jay!” Grayson screamed at this villain who'd apparently once been _Robin_. Damian had an absurd sense of déjà vu as he bled out over a gunshot wound, of all things. Thank god Drake wasn't here to laugh at him.

“You never wanted to be Batman,” Jason Todd sneered back, tossing the gun in favor of using his fists. There was something blood-red on his exposed bicep, which Damian would’ve thought was actually blood if he didn’t know what blood looked like. Red words.

Soul-words?

“I’d get things _done,_ Dickie-bird! Make sure those pieces of shit stayed in the ground and not ruin any more lives!”

“By becoming a murderer yourself, is that it?” Grayson shot back, "You _shot_ Damian!"

"It's not personal, baby bat," Todd drawled at Damian, "But I've a bone to pick with your mother, and you were right there." And it was to Todd’s sarcastic laughter that Damian finally fell into darkness.

When he awoke, Drake had apparently gotten himself captured like the princess he was, and Grayson was losing his goddamn mind.

“Get Tim,” he said in that awful dead voice he’d been using since they’d put Father in the ground. “Get Tim and then get out of there. I can’t lose either of you.”

There was a subtle emotional break in his voice then, something he hadn’t heard since Father’s will had been read aloud. Damian, who hadn't visibly reacted since Father's death, had felt his resolve crack right when Grayson had stood up and left the boardroom. Pennyworth had seemed to understand, at least. He'd placed a gloved hand on Damian’s shoulder, and Damian had felt his lip wobble a fraction against his will.

So when they secured the Red Hood and sent him off to Arkham, Todd's strange red maybe soul-words were the last thing on his mind. Not with Drake rambling on about portraits and blue words and Grayson hugging the cowl like a security blanket.

Not with Damian trying to make sense of this sudden void, feeling like he was back to square one. Worse than square one. His defection from the League meant he didn't even have to kill his soulmate anymore, an uneasy realization that he shoved into the back of his mind. It'd been his whole life for so long, he refused to lose that too.

Not when, without Father, he wasn't even sure who he was meant to be.

 

\--

 

“You’re Robin,” Grayson said softly, when they returned to the cave and he'd reluctantly pulled out one of Father's batsuits. Damian took the Robin badge with a smile, one that only grew wider when Drake stood up and stalked out of the room.

 

\--

 

Drake left.

“I know he’s alive,” he informed Grayson in a cold voice, still obviously smarting over Grayson handing the Robin title to Damian. “And I’m going to find him whether you believe me or not.”

“Tim,” Grayson started.

“ _No_ , Dick, don’t you ‘Tim’ me! You _know_ the first time’s always gray, and if you just _look_ at the portrait it makes perfect sense—”

“We buried him!” Grayson snapped. “I held his hand and _buried_ him! Bruce is _dead_!”

“Have you even looked into the other possibilities?”

“Cease your speculation, Drake,” Damian interrupted, uncomfortable with the increasingly cold look creeping into Grayson’s face. “Show us concrete proof, if you have any.”

Drake’s glare could curdle milk. “Stay out of this, hell spawn.”

“Not if you keep disturbing Grayson with your _wild conjectures_ —”

“I know he’s alive!”

“Enough!” Grayson said in a tone so similar to Father’s both Damian and Drake snapped their mouth shut reflexively. He looked into Drake’s grim face and visibly took a deep breath. “Whatever you and I believe, Tim, Gotham needs a Batman. Please understand.”

“Then I’ll go alone,” Drake said defiantly. That lasted all of two seconds before his lip trembled. “Just—Dick. Please. If there's even the slimmest chance, I need to chase after it. I can't lose him too.”

“You already have!” Damian yelled at him, the last of his patience gone. He would’ve started throwing punches if Grayson’s hand hadn’t clamped onto his shoulder.

“Go upstairs, Damian,” Grayson said. “Now.”

“But—”

“This is between me and Tim,” Grayson said. Damian wanted to stay and argue, but something in Grayson’s face stopped him. So he went.

Drake left the next morning, and Grayson didn't mention their fight or his departure again. It was strange how much emptier the manor felt now; not just literally, but also emotionally. He hadn't realized how fiercely Grayson emoted his joy, his anger, his sadness. Not until he was inexplicably replaced by this new Grayson, one that emoted nothing at all.

Even Pennyworth was worried. The old butler left trays of food in the Batcave that Grayson refused to touch; the next morning Damian always had to wait an extra fifteen minutes so the butler could retrieve all the spoiled food and spray down the area. Even then, his favorite chair still smelled faintly of spoiled milk.

Damian had the insane urge to poke Grayson with a stick. Anything so he'd finally destroy the house or do whatever he needed to do to get that goddamn empty look off his face.

 

\--

 

(“Oh _Dick_ ,” a redheaded woman in a wheelchair said, arriving with two other women in tow. Damian hung back as he watched Grayson practically trip into her lap, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his head in her stomach.

“Hell spawn,” the blonde woman behind her commented when she saw him. Damian narrowed his eyes at her. Obviously Drake had been spreading rumors and lies.

“Batgirl, Oracle, and a former Robin,” Grayson had explained after they left. “I introduced you weeks ago.”

“How many Bats _are_ there,” Damian demanded, bristling, and Grayson just stared up at the monitors with his favorite new Emotionless-Father expression.

“Too many for me to feel so alone,” he said.

Damian didn’t know what to say to that. Rule one of the League of Shadows: you were always alone. Nothing said that better than gray words on dark skin.

Except this was Father they were talking about. Damian’s Father, whom he’ll never be able to prove himself to again. The thought made angry tears well up in his eyes. When Grayson suited up for patrol, Damian wiped his face with the back of his hand.

He was Robin. He needed to save the night. Grayson was just a weak imitation of Father in his cowl, after all, which meant Damian had to pick up the slack.

And Robins didn’t _cry_.)

 

\--

 

The only good thing that came out of the next few weeks was Grayson’s decision to move everyone to the Wayne Tower penthouse. It was so modern and new and _clean_ —not like the old manor, where Father’s ghost seemed to haunt every corner.

Everything else, however, was shit.

"The man was clearly incapacitated—there's no need to hit him once he's secured. We're meant to get justice, not revenge," Grayson growled in a poor copy of Father's Batman voice. Damian sneered and kicked his way out of the Batmobile once they arrived at the cave. "Robin!"

"Your rationale's faulty," Damian crumpled his cape into a ball and threw it on the floor. "Talk all you want, but what you're doing at the end of the day is making sure some criminal lives on to _keep_ finding victims."

Grayson stood so stiffly Damian could see how strangers could mistake him as Father's Batman. That posture was iconic. But anyone with profiling skills could tell that Grayson was shorter, more lithe, and had sacrificed great swathes of Batsuit armor for better mobility. He even managed to make the cape look _graceful_.

"You sound like Jason," Grayson finally said.

"Well maybe Todd has the right idea!"

"Damian!" the man called out when the boy stormed up the stairs. "Damian, we're not done talking about this."

"Well _I_ am," Damian sneered, and slammed the door on his way out.

That was a typical patrol day. Sometimes, it was worse: like the times Damian openly talked back to Grayson in front of their peers, or abandoned Batman mid-battle to tackle the villains himself. He was getting sick of the phrases "excessive force" and "recklessly disobedient" and "stubborn little brat." Though Grayson only used the last one twice. The first was in a joking tone, and the second was in anger. But other than some harsh words and disapproving stares across the breakfast table, Dick Grayson did nothing else to discourage Damian's behavior.

Which wasn't surprising, since it took a lot of effort to get Dick Grayson to do anything these days.

Work was fine, since clearly every Bat was a chronic workaholic. But anything else? No. Damian knew from the sheer number of unopened letters in their living room that Grayson hadn't talked to his friends in weeks. He half-expected them to break down the door like the redheaded woman, but heroes were busy and Grayson was good at looking put-together in public.

Even if he once lay down in the middle of the kitchen floor and refused to move for hours.

"Pennyworth, I think Grayson's legs have finally broken," he'd alerted the butler, who'd shuffled into the kitchen and used his magical butler powers to nudge Grayson off the tile. Damian should have felt amused at his ineptitude— he certainly would have before Father's death—but he wasn't. It was  _awful_.

Which was why it took Damian completely by surprise when Grayson mustered up the energy to play dirty.

“I’m sorry, Master Damian,” Pennyworth sighed when Damian barged out of his room in a rage. “Master Dick insisted on confiscating your swords while you were out training.”

“You can’t DO that!’ he’d screamed at Grayson, who was sitting in Father’s seat wearing Father’s outfit and just crossing his arms while Damian ranted at him. “Those are mine, gifted to me by my grandfather and mother, and are irreplaceable symbols of my heritage. I demand them be returned!”

“They will, eventually,” Grayson said coolly. He sat up. “Damian, I’m not Bruce, and it’s not my job to baby you. But it is my job to make sure we work well as a team. I've put it off for far too long, but we need to establish some ground rules. Robin and Batman are partners, and until you understand that…”

Damian punched Grayson in the face. The man stumbled backwards and rubbed his jaw, but was otherwise undeterred. “…I’ll have to resort to childish punishments like this.”

Damian stalked out of the Batcave, furious and indignant and even somewhat nervous. Because he wasn't _stupid._ He knew what rules Grayson was talking about. It took far too many patrols of relatively good behavior for Grayson to return the swords. He'd even installed neat, perfectly measured racks in his room so Damian could hang them up on the walls, the detail-oriented bastard.

Damian scowled at the beautiful display. He might’ve wanted to punch Dick Grayson’s face in one more time, but he had to grudgingly admit that this meant Grayson was returning to normal. Sort of.

Except he knew that it was only a matter of time before Grayson's facade broke completely. The letters were still fucking unopened, for god's sake. He expected it to be violent. Angry. Three weeks later, it was all that and more.

"Why do you care if Father's gone, anyway?" Robin had yelled during a particularly bad fight in the Batcave. He kicked a medical pail across the floor and violently upended the rolling cot. "You're not even his blood!"

"Why do _I_ care?" Grayson ripped off the cowl to reveal his fury-stricken face. Damian had never seen the man so not put-together, and it would have scared him if he hadn't been expecting it. "I've known Bruce for almost _twenty years_. More than half my life! And you're asking why I care? Why do _you_ care? You only knew him for a few short months, Damian!" Grayson's bellowing voice cracked at the last sentence. Damian took a step back. One thing he'd never truly understood about Grayson was his emotional fluidity; for Damian, anger was anger and sadness was sadness. He'd never transition from rage to the kind of devastated look the man was throwing at him now. "That's barely anything. You never got the chance to see the _real_ Bruce, not the way I've seen him and loved him. All he'll ever be to you is an ideal, but there was so much more to him than that. And I can't—I try so hard to show you that but I—I keep fucking it up."

"Grayson," Damian said, uncomfortable, when the man put a hand to his eyes and took a shaky breath. He jumped when a firm hand clasped his shoulder, and looked up to find Alfred Pennyworth standing behind him. The butler gently pushed him towards the stairs.

"Dinner is ready on the counter," he said primly. "Don't wait up. Master Dick and I will dine when we're ready."

The old butler shook out blanket from a cabinet and wrapped it around Grayson's shoulders. Awkward and wrong-footed, Damian slipped upstairs. Because Grayson—what Grayson had said was true. It _shouldn't_ be true, but it was.

What made him feel most guilty, however, was how _upset_ Grayson had been on his behalf. It wasn't just Father's marked absence from his own life. It was his absence from Damian's. He couldn't remember the last time someone had ever cared about him like that.

"I fixed the bed in the Bunker," he awkwardly approached Grayson the next morning. The man looked exhausted down to his very soul, but gave Damian a small smile. That was already ten times better than anything he'd seen that month. "Now you may become incapacitated as often as you'd like."

"Noted," Grayson said, savvy enough to read between the lines and accept Damian's apology. He gestured towards a chair. "Now sit down, Alfred's made french toast for breakfast."

And Damian hesitantly, carefully, pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

 

\--

 

Things could only go uphill from there.

 

\--

 

Unfortunately, Damian had forgotten what a horrible, ridiculous person the _normal_ Grayson was. So while the letters in the living room had finally disappeared, he had to endure meddling in the rest of his life.

"I don't need _proper social interaction_ ," Damian shouted, storming into the Batcave in righteous fury. He waved the stupid card Grayson had left on his bedroom drawer in the air. The Tower drawn on it looked both ridiculous and painfully unstable.

"Too bad," Grayson said, cleaning his escrima sticks with a bored expression. "I've already told Starfire you're going."

"Do you mean Starfire, your _ex-girlfriend_." Damian picked up a water bottle and chucked it at the man's head. Grayson ducked, twirled a shiny escrima stick in his hand, and swiveled his chair around. Damian recoiled at the shit-eating grin on the man's face.

"Well it's either _this_ ," he said in a pleasant tone, twirling the stick back and forth between his hands, "or Gotham Academy."

"You wouldn't," Damian said in horror. When Grayson's smile just got wider, the boy fled back upstairs. When he came down, however, he was decked out in his Robin costume and had clearly packed more than half of his sword collection in his duffle.

"Good choice," Grayson's eyes lit up. "You'll have so much fun. It's practically a Robin _tradition_."

"Just shut up and drive, Grayson," Damian snarled before ducking into the Batmobile and crossing his arms.

 

\--

 

Damian hated Titan Tower.

He hated the people, he hated the building, he hated how Grayson smiled easily at these strangers when he should only smile like that at _Damian_.

Introductions were icy. Their first training session was even worse. After they'd finally returned from the _demon realm_ , of all places, Damian was all set to pack his bags and walk home to Gotham himself. Unfortunately, Starfire tattled to Grayson, who made Damian sit through an hour-long skype call until they came to an agreement. Rather than live at the tower full-time, Grayson would drive Damian there and back from nine to five on weekdays.

As this was far more inconvenient for Grayson, Damian saw no problems with the plan. Except for the fact that he'd be stuck in the Tower for _eight hours_ on a regular basis.

“Enough, monster man!” he snarled, throwing two birdarangs at the cawing pterodactyl. Only one of Starfire’s pointed bolts kept them from embedding themselves into Beast Boy’s head. Pity. “Just leave me alone!”

“Cheery ray of sunshine, isn’t he,” Blue Beetle muttered. He held his hands out and let the ruffled Beast Boy pterodactyl settle in his palms. “And I thought Tim was reserved. This one’s scary loco.”

“I can _hear you_ ,” Damian called out snidely.

Raven was still his favorite Titan member. She understood death like he did, and he appreciated the solidarity. They meditated together often enough that Damian found himself pulled aside after a week.

“Look, hermano,” Jaime Reyes said. “Raven’s kind of sexy in like a goth kind of way, but she’s pretty… reserved. You know what I mean?”

Damian blinked at him coolly.

“Okay, no you don't," the Blue Beetle armor covered more of his body the more nervous the teenager got, Damian noted. “What I mean is, Raven’s Garfield’s soulmate. Gar’s kind of a spaz and they’re just friends for now but I wanted to give you a heads-up. Raven’s not the kind to date out-of-soulmate.”

“Oh,” Damian said. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind, because thinking about other people's soulmates reminded him of his own. The one he was destined to murder, even though he wasn't sure he wanted to anymore. At least, not for the same reasons. “Thank you for the information. I assure you, however, my interest in Raven is purely platonic. You may tell Logan that he need not fear me for such a dull reason.”

“Yeah, no, we fear you for a lotta better reasons,” Reyes muttered under his breath.

Now that it was brought to his attention, however, Damian couldn't help but obsess over Raven's future happiness. Absurd as it was, these two were the first soulmate pair he'd seen interact on a daily basis. Drake's moping had obviously misrepresented a typical soul-bond, because the more he watched the two, the more concerned he felt. Of everyone Raven could have been soul-bonded to, it was to the green-skinned jokester who pranced about naked when he wasn't a dog. Or a gorilla. Or a t-rex that one time, a form Starfire had banned after he'd accidentally smashed a hole through two walls.

“Whatcha looking at,” Beast Boy grinned over his shoulder one lunch break, and Damian glared at him. “Is that homework? Tim used to do homework in downtime. Are all you Robins nerds?”

“This is far more difficult to any homework I would have received from school,” Damian told him stiffly. Not that he’d received much, if any, given that Grayson had used _not_ going to Gotham Academy as a bargaining chip to get him here.

“If you don’t have homework, than why are you working?” the teenager sank into the couch in a sprawl. Damian bristled at the casual way his feet settled in his lap. What did this boy and Raven have in common anyway? “Me and Jaime’s gotta game going on in a few minutes. You wanna help me kick his ass?”

“I can’t,” Damian said coolly. “I have to help Gr—Batman run diagnostics for several high-profile cases in Gotham.”

“Jeez,” Beast Boy frowned, propping his head up with an arm. “The Bat works you hard, doesn’t he? Don’t you have any _fun_?”

“Fun is for children,” Damian said, which was when Logan finally—blissfully—gave up.

 _Good_.

By the time Starfire called for a group training session, Damian had long escaped up a ventilation shaft. Raven knew where he was, of course, but like any trustworthy ally didn’t expose him. It was Blue Beetle who managed to blow out a vent with a well-aimed plasma beam… causing half the rec room ceiling to fall on top of them.

“He did _what_ ,” Grayson groaned after Starfire had called him up on her phone. “Jesus, Kory, I’m so sorry. Put it on my bill. In fact, put all of Damian's damages on my bill, god knows we deserve it. And make sure he doesn’t gut anyone before I pick him up.”

Starfire looked long-suffering when she hung up. Damian simply smiled at her with all his teeth. Perhaps she’d regret pitying her ex and taking in his partner slash adoptive brother slash adopted son.

Grayson couldn't force him to come here if he was banned.

 

\--

 

(“How is Dick doing?” Starfire had asked him once when Grayson had been running late. “I understand that Bruce’s passing must have been... difficult for him.”

“Father’s death is none of your business,” Damian interrupted, hands curling into fists at the memory of those first few weeks. If Koriand'r had actually cared, she'd have flown by and blasted Grayson off the floor herself. “And even if it was, I would never divulge an ally’s weakness to a woman he once dallied with a decade ago.”

Starfire jerked back like she’d been slapped.

"You know," she said quietly. “Bruce never liked me either.”

“Father had impeccable judgement.”

“He didn't,” Starfire told him. “I dated Dick around the same time your parents were in the Middle East. It must have been difficult when he discovered your existence.”

“Excuse me?” Damian snarled, using anger to hide his hurt at Starfire’s implication.

"Oh," Starfire's mouth opened in surprise, "Dick never told you.”

 _Told me what_ , Damian wanted to scream at her, except that was when the Batmobile finally arrived and Grayson rolled down the window. Starfire gave him a small wave and, really, Damian felt like he’d never get used to the image of a fully-dressed Batman smiling so easily.

“The Titans aren’t too bad, are they,” Grayson said in a casual tone. Damian just sank down in his chair with a scowl. Knowledge was power, he knew, and it bothered him to realize how little he knew about his adopted family still.)

 

\--

 

Grayson sometimes woke up screaming in the middle of the night.

It was always loud enough to jolt Damian awake, and despite his meticulous training succeeded in scaring him every single time. He blamed it on instinct. Grayson was powerful and graceful, yes, but just wasn’t the solid rock Father had been.

(He wasn’t sure when he’d gone from wanting Grayson to irreparably break so he could take up the Batman mantle himself; to wanting Grayson to stay strong for as long as possible, because where would Damian be if he left him too?)

The first and only time he nudged open Grayson’s door, he stood there watching the man shake in the dark.

“Bruce?” Grayson asked groggily, and Damian felt something in his chest clench. After a pause, Grayson ventured again in a clearer voice: “Damian?”

“You woke me up,” Damian said. He walked in and stood stiffly by Grayson’s bed. He noticed the various picture frames set up on drawer beside him: the red-headed woman in the wheelchair; Father and a teenage Grayson smiling at the camera; and a gathering of young teenagers whom Damian assumed were the first Teen Titans.

Grayson blinked rapidly and then settled back down in bed. “I—I’m alright, Damian. Sorry. You can go back to sleep.”

Damian didn’t move.

Grayson sighed, “Dami…”

“Do not interrupt me while I stand vigil,” Damian snapped. “Go to sleep, Grayson. I will watch over you.”

He was being serious, and found it insulting when Grayson just smiled indulgently at him. “You’re my guardian angel, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m far more deadly than some _angel_ ,” Damian told him. He barely held back what was on the tip of his tongue: that Father wasn’t here anymore to comfort Grayson, and so Damian would just have to pick up the slack.

It wouldn’t do either of them good to remind him of that.

The next morning, Damian found himself blinking up from bed. He sat up sharply. He must have passed out at one point, because he had no memory of Grayson tucking him under the covers beside him.

The man himself had fallen back asleep, face buried in his pillow and limbs sprawled everywhere. He looked… startlingly young. Damian hadn’t realized just how heavily Father’s death had weighed him down until those dark lines were gone.

Damian was _Robin_ now. He should have noticed.

“Grayson,” he said haughtily. It was eight, which meant they were running late if Damian wanted to make it to Titan Tower on time. “Grayson, wake up.”

“Five more minutes, Bruce,” Grayson mumbled, pulling the covers over his head.

Damian scowled. “As I am certainly not Father, I can only conclude you are still in a deep stage of sleep. Which is unacceptable. Get _up,_ Grayson, or else I’ll run late.”

“Oh?” Grayson sounded marginally more alive. The man rolled onto his back and blinked up at him. Then, he smiled. “Do I detect a hint of longing there? Are you _looking forward_ to the Titans, Dami?”

“No!” Damian barked out, too taken off-guard to feign derision. "And don't call me _Dami_."

He threw off the covers and stalked into the kitchen where Pennyworth was making pancakes. He finished half a stack by the time Grayson appeared.

“You were a very good angel yesterday,” was the first thing he said in a too-serious tone, the bastard.

“Do not talk to me like you’re indulging me,” Damian snapped. Grayson ruffled his hair and Damian, as usual, batted his hand away. “Do not touch me!”

“It’s going to be a difficult day, isn’t it,” Grayson told Pennyworth wearily, and went to fetch the car keys.

Damian tried to pay better attention to Grayson’s wellbeing after that, just so he wouldn’t suffer the indignity of being the only Robin whose Batman fell over dead. Grayson seemed caught between amused and touched by Damian’s changed behavior.

Sometimes Damian even found him staring at that old picture of him and Father, one hand curled around his thigh and a distant look on his face.

 

\--

 

As suggested by their title, joining the Teen Titans meant he'd be dealing with _teenagers_.

And teenagers loved soulmate gossip more than anything. Damian was surprised it'd taken them so long to broach the subject.

“You haven’t met your soulmate yet, right?” Logan was prattling on from where he hung upside down from the second-floor railing. Damian glanced up at him briefly before resuming his research. “Do you even have one?”

“If you want to talk about soulmates so much, Logan—”

“Can you _not_ call me Logan—”

“—than it would be fruitful for you to consult Raven. You know. _Your_ soulmate.”

Logan wrinkled his nose and swung off of the rails. “Yeah, but we’re talking about _you_ , not me. C’mon, what’re your words? You can tell me.”

“ _No_ ,” Damian spat. He didn't want to talk about it, and he certainly didn't want to talk about it to Raven's buffoon-of-a-soulmate (who didn't deserve her at all.) When Logan tried wrestling his shirt off him—the boy needed a serious lesson in self-preservation—Damian kicked him solidly in the stomach.

“Run, monster man!” Damian shouted, and only felt marginally appeased when Logan transformed into a rabbit and fled.

Raven found him after training. Rather than meditate together in Raven’s room as usual, she led him to an empty grove further away from the tower.

“Garfield brought up your soulmate today,” she said in her typically blunt manner. She lit the incense in the middle of the clearing and watched the purplish smoke rise between them. “He is… nosy. But it reminded me that I needed to speak to you myself.”

Damian bristled. He couldn't help it. “I fail to see how it’s any of your business.”

“It's not,” Raven floated above the ground and crossed her legs. “But I worry about you, Damian. We all do. I could feel your doubt and dread regarding the League of Shadows' rules that first time we connected. Now that everything's changed, what will you do when you find your soulmate? Will you fell them with your sword... or embrace the connection?”

“Stop," Damian snapped, hating the way Raven’s calm words dug right under his skin. This was a topic he’d purposefully kept away from his thoughts. It hit too close to that painful piece of himself he’d buried deep inside, after Talia had given him an ultimatum and Damian had stood against her. The first time he’d ever stood against her.

“It hurts less if you cut the line at the beginning,” Damian finally echoed, because even after months of slowly accepting the concept of soulmates he couldn't wipe out years of indoctrination. “When they are still strangers to you. Every assassin has felled their soulmate in the long history of my people. It is a sign of loyalty to the League's cause.”

“But what do _you_ think, Damian?” Raven blinked at him. “Is the League of Shadows still ‘your people?’”

Damian could barely breathe, much less swallow. This was—he didn’t want to—

“I,” he said. He was horrified to find his hands shaking. It made no sense. He’d rejected Talia several times, fought against his own Grandfather, had willingly taken his disownment with his head raised high. But here, before Raven, he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth.

“I don’t know,” he answered the teenager honestly, each word harder to drag out than the last. "I am no longer sure if I believe in Grandfather's rhetoric. But I've seen how devastating it is to lose one's soulmate. Perhaps it's better if we don't meet at all."

He ducked his head down at Raven's careful gaze. “And it doesn’t matter anyway. I won’t find him, not with my word.”

And for the first time, he willingly pulled down his collar and twisted around so she could see the bold script written there: _HELLO_. Because even when his entire philosophy fell apart, the problem he faced was the same.

The sheer commonality of _HELLO_ had protected his soulmate from an untimely death. And now it protected his soulmate from ever having to meet Damian Wayne, who despite being a skilled assassin was probably not the best partner in the world. Forget Logan's ridiculousness; how was his destined going to feel when Damian admitted that his first instinct had been to _chop his head off_.

He turned back and looked at Raven defiantly, after she'd had time to take in his dilemma.

Raven—well, Raven was perfect.

She simply nodded in acceptance, and it was like he could breathe again. She held out both her hands and used her power to lift Damian up so their gazes were level.

“You will find him,” she said gently. “I’m sure of it, Damian. Just as thousands of other pairs come together without realizing it, drawn to each other through space,” she put her hand on her stomach, where her words were, “and time.” She gestured at the ground and lifted up a squirming beetle, which she rested carefully in her palm. “And in our line of work, we can even find each other after death as well.”

The beetle spread its wings and flew away. Damian blinked; he’d never considered Blue Beetle’s soulmate at all. Raven said, “I’m sure neither Robin would trade their pain for not having had their soulmate at all.”

“They’re not Robins anymore,” Damian said petulantly. “I am. And Grayson doesn’t have a soulmate.”

Raven furrowed her brow.

“That’s not true,” she said slowly, looking at Damian like he'd just told her the sky was orange. “Who told you that?”

 _Father’s files_ , Damian wanted to say, except admitting that opened up the idea that Father could be _wrong_. Which couldn’t happen.

And if Grayson had a soulmate, Damian would _know_.

“I wish _you_ were my soulmate," Damian finally admitted, because today was the day of heart-to-hearts apparently.

Raven allowed him his change in topic, which he appreciated. “Would you have killed me?”

“I don’t know. But you understand what it’s like. Not like _them_.”

“Perhaps I understand too much,” she mused. “People like us, we need a light to guide us. Garfield is a jokester, yes, but at the heart of it he’s very warm. He makes me feel… human.”

Damian had nothing to say to that. He hadn't considered Raven's thoughts towards Logan in his constant worrying; he should have known better. He _will_ know better. Determined to learn, he closed his eyes and emptied his mind. They floated there for what felt like eons.

 

\--

 

(Jaime Reyes was confused but not against showing Damian his soul-words. He'd simply taken off his t-shirt and gestured at the line scrawled across his lower back beneath his Blue Scarab: " _Aha! I found you, Blue!”_

Damian couldn't help but stare. They were, almost too fittingly, _blue_.

“What do you mean you've never seen colored words before?” Reyes faced him and folded his arms when Damian asked. “I mean, they started popping up once the universe expanded beyond life and death. People dying and coming back to life left and right, not to mention time travel shenanigans.”

“Illogical,” Damian said stiffly. Of all the absurd things he’d accepted about soul-words since arriving in Gotham, this was the hardest to swallow. “Too many people travel through time and space without their words changing color.”

“It’s not an exact science,” Reyes said. He picked up his t-shirt from the floor and pulled it on, the armor receding into his back to make room. “Knowing if your soulmate's jumping time or dimensions keeps the words black. Things get complicated when you _don’t_ know. The first time always scares the shit out of everyone, see. Takes the mysterious soul-connection one 'death' to start color coding right, which means the first time's always gray."

 _First time’s always gray_.

Drake had mentioned that once, when he was fighting with Grayson over Father’s death. If the first time turned the words gray, that meant their soulmate was only mistaken for dead. But Father didn't have a soulmate. No words to turn gray after his passing, no color-coded nonsense to jumpstart.

“Punched Bart in the face the first time he pulled that kind of stunt on me,” Reyes muttered to himself, and just threw up his hands when Damian stalked off without a word.

Blue was time travel, Damian found out, when he came face-to-face with Bart Allen himself weeks later. He’d apparently been dead, dying, alternating between different times and dimensions like a yo-yo, or all of the above. No wonder Reyes had seemed so nonchalant about colored words.

“Oh shit!” Allen had said the moment he’d seen Damian. He flickered and then was _right there_ , invading his personal space and tugging on Damian’s hair until the younger boy snarled at him. “Shit, I thought Timmy’d be here! But no, it’s just the hell spawn. Wait, are you wearing the Robin outfit? You’re Robin? That’s so not crash. Where’s Tim?”

“Proving that Father isn’t dead,” Damian said.

“Oh course Batman’s not dead,” Allen said derisively. “I mean, look at me! _I’m_ not dead! And neither’s Conner—you won’t believe how much bitching I had to put up with, he kept wanting to jump back in time as soon as possible and I was like, dude! Relax! We can jump back _any time we want_ , that’s what the time machine’s for—”

“You are loud, nonsensical, and talk too fast,” Damian announced. “Reyes, come collect your soulmate before I draw my sword.”

“I’m going to warn you once, hermano,” Reyes called out from in front of the TV, where he and Logan were racing each other in Mario Kart. “You threaten his life, my scarab’s gonna blast your head off. Raven won’t be able to heal you in time, so watch it.”

“Your lack of control over your scarab friend is unacceptable,” Damian told him scathingly, but retreated to the kitchen anyway. Whatever. He had no desire to sit through tales about strangers, especially when they wanted Drake and not him. He might as well hunt down Starfire’s gingersnap cookies.

She’d made them just for Allen’s return, and were therefore the perfect target for spiteful revenge.)

 

\--

 

Damian couldn't help but hunt down the portrait Drake had been obsessed with. And yes, the man sitting in the frame had blue words. Or a blue smudge on his arm.

Blue meant _time travel_.

Except they’d found and buried Father’s body—a body without words, like every other corpse Damian had had the pleasure to see—so that couldn’t be true. Father couldn’t have been thrown back in time, much less had his portrait painted. That was absurd.

Until they discovered the body they’d put into the ground _wasn’t_ Father. It was some clone or monster or whatever, and he’d never seen Grayson look so horrified in his life. Damian had been shaken up too, and had retreated to his room in the penthouse.

The next time he visited the manor, the painting was gone.

 

\--

 

Damian found out on a Monday.

Patrol had been going well until one of Damian’s kicks flung some goon into a busy intersection. Batman lost track of the illegal shipment trying to save the guy, and had ordered their retreat to the Batcave at once.

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” Damian exploded when they got out of the Batmobile. Grayson, in a move more typical of Father, hadn’t said a word the whole ride back. “If we track the bug I planted now…”

“No,” Batman said. “Go upstairs and go to bed. I’ll handle this tonight.”

“You can’t take me off the mission!”

“I can and I will. You’re off your game, Damian. Now _go_.”

Despite his efforts to obey orders, Damian wasn’t about to be benched for no reason. He snuck out with his sword and had been doing just fine until a psychopath came barreling from the sky and led a horde of armed goons right on top of them both.

From all the possible people he’d expected answers from, Jason Todd hadn't even made it on the list.

“I ain’t your enemy here, baby bat,” the young man grumbled, struggling against his own ropes. “Bastards are gunning after me for killing their boss. Son of a bitch owned a sex slave ring, nasty stuff. So—ow! Stop kicking me!”

“You escaped from Arkham,” Damian growled flatly. He kicked Todd again out of spite, because he was in no way a _baby bat_. “Grayson didn’t tell me.”

“Like Dickie boy would ever want you thinking he was less than perfect,” Todd rolled his eyes, and cursed when Damian kicked him again. “ _Jesus_!”

They gave up trying to escape an hour in. The goons didn’t even have the decency to come rough them up a bit, which mean their kidnapping had been about getting them out of the way... or someone else was taking up all of their resources. Grayson on a rampage, maybe.

After another half an hour of chilling silence, Damian glared over his shoulder. “You seem more sane today, Todd.”

“Off those goddamn meds,” Red Hood said lightly. “And the Joker ain’t laughing two cubes down anymore. Practically heaven out here in the sewers.”

“Your mental instability was present even before you entered Arkham Asylum.”

“Yeah, thanks for that. Look, I’m guessing Dick’s razing the city looking for you by now. Mind making sure he doesn’t just pop me back behind bars again?”

Damian narrowed his eyes. “You _shot me_.”

“To be fair,” Todd said, “I wouldn’t be like this if Talia hadn’t fucked my resurrection up. Also, I was angry.” After a beat. “Oh, come on! Like you haven’t beheaded people for less.”

“That,” Damian growled, “that is a closed chapter of my life. Beheadings are no longer on the table. Father wouldn’t approve.”

“Oh, _Father wouldn’t approve_. Not this crap again,” Todd sighed. “Bruce is _dead_. He died and good old Nightwing’s taken up the mantle, except Dick’s compromised from the broken soul-bond—”

“The what?” Damian said.

“—which is why I should’ve taken up the cowl,” Todd concluded evenly, like this very point hadn’t caused him to go off the rails and attempt to murder all the Robins. Arkham had been the best they could offer him. “But nope. No way. Dick’s gotta do everything, see, ‘cause he’s the only one that can do it right. ‘Cause he’s the _perfect_ one.”

“What did you mean by _broken soul-bond_ ,” Damian demanded. Todd tilted his head, considering him.

“Dick never told you, did he?” he sounded gleeful. “Of course he didn’t. Years later and they keep forgetting they don't need to be on the down-low. I bet they haven’t even updated their files.”

“About what?”

“Their soulmate information, of course,” Todd said. “Oh, this is priceless. Let me give you a hint, kid.” Todd leaned forward as far as his bonds would allow him to. “Bruce’s soul-words are on his elbow.”

“What,” Damian said. His thoughts screeched to a halt. “But.”

Father didn’t have soul-words. Talia had told him so the one time he'd asked, and he'd confirmed it in Father's files— _they’d been wiped, Father wouldn’t have wanted it on record_. And even if he did, how did knowing they were on his elbow explain anything—

The man in the portrait. Grayson's old tendency to lead Father by the elbow. A night spent in front of the fireplace, spotlighting Father's rare, vulnerable expression.

And then finally, _finally_ he understood.

“There it is,” Todd laughed. His head lolled against the wall. “Never guessed how fucked up Daddy and the Golden Boy were, didn’t you?”

“Shut the hell up, Todd,” Damian snapped, even as his mind reeled.

God, he’d been so _stupid_. Everything seemed to turn on its head when looked at from this angle. Grayson had never truly questioned losing Father to anything but death, because one thing Talia al Ghul had drilled into Damian’s head was how tenacious that soul-bond could be.

They'd been soulmates.

 _Soulmates._ Damian had complained those first few months about not knowing how a proper soulmate couple acted, and there had been one in front of him _the whole time_. How had he missed that?

While Todd chortled, Damian lurched forward and took a bite right through his glove. The Red Hood snarled in pain and kneed Damian in the stomach. They tussled with knees and teeth alone, and Damian managed to catch a glimpse of Todd’s red words again—red was resurrection, the dead coming back to life—before losing his advantage. Todd was slamming his head into the ground when Batman and Batgirl found them.

In hindsight, Damian was surprised Grayson didn’t shove Todd’s head in the sewage.

“He’s _ten years old_!” he yelled. “You could have _killed_ him, Jason. Again!”

“He’s an assassin,” the Red Hood argued back. “They’re not kids. They’re weapons. You’d see that too—”

“If you call Damian a weapon again—”

“—if you weren’t so heartbroken over Bruce you’re replacing him with his kid. You didn’t even tell him what Bruce meant to you, huh? Why? You’re ashamed?”

Grayson’s expression was tight under the cowl, his lips a thin line. “That’s enough.”

“’Cause Bruce had him out-of-soulmate,” Todd laughed, jerking his chin at Damian. “You can’t tell me you weren’t angry when you found out the brat existed. Like one big middle finger from Talia, one last time.”

Batgirl let out an alarmed yell when Batman seized the Red Hood and flung him against the wall. He slammed Todd’s head against the mortar once, twice, and then that awful red hood shattered into a dozen pieces. Todd’s face beneath it was caught in a grimace, and it’d been a while since Damian had seen that red domino mask. It made him look so much more like a lost Robin and not a psychopath; not that that stopped Grayson from yanking his head back by the hair.

“Damian is an amazing kid,” he growled lowly. “He’s strong. Perceptive. A pain in the ass, sure, but he’s got a good heart. I’m so damn lucky to have him in my life, no matter who’s his dad. Because _you_ , of all people, know family isn’t just _blood_. If you dare talk like that about someone I love again—”

“You’ll what?” Todd grinned. “Kill me? Glad to see you’re carrying the Batman tradition of playing favorites.”

Batgirl—the blonde one, since the dark-haired predecessor had fucked off to Hong Kong or something—managed to cut Damian out of his ties and haul him to his feet. He leaned dazedly against her, his eyes burning. Damian blinked in horror. He _can’t_ cry, not in front of this red-masked asshole.

“No, I’m not going to kill you,” Grayson said in an eerily calm voice. He snapped something out of his gauntlet and plunged it into Todd’s neck: a syringe. The bulkier man fell into his arms like a rock, where Grayson held him far too gently considering he’d been beating his head in seconds prior. “I’m going to help you, Jay. I promise.”

“By what? Throwing him back into Arkham?” Damian coughed. Better than crying. “Where the Joker will just exacerbate his already plentiful mental issues. Again.”

“No—I mean…” Grayson sounded defeated. He turned to Batgirl. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Bring him to the Watchtower, I guess,” Batgirl suggested. “Arkham’s definitely not working, and we all know a former Robin’s dangerous to everyone in the wrong hands. If anyone can help, it’ll be the Justice League.”

Grayson might have argued about involving others in family business if Damian hadn’t walked up to Todd’s prone form and punched him in his unconscious face. They shoved him in the Batmobile quickly after that.

Damian expected his mentor to scold him as usual the entire ride back. There was nothing Grayson liked better than a lecture on "excessive force."

But not today, apparently.

Grayson didn’t address what Jason had said about him and Father. Not when he’d made his report in the Batcave; not after he’d called up J’onn and arranged for Todd to be zetad up to the Watchtower; not even when he’d hovered by Damian’s bedroom door, like he was afraid to step over the threshold.

“Damian,” the man finally said, questioning, and Damian just turned his back to him.

After a long moment, Grayson retreated. Damian breathed shakily into his pillow. Soulmates were a weakness, Grandfather had said. They were a liability.

Father wasn’t weak. Grayson wasn’t either, even if he acted like a buffoon half the time.

And then he thought of Logan and Raven’s easy but distant relationship; Reyes’ long-suffering acceptance of Allen’s flitting about; of Grayson leaning over Father’s shoulder, pressing their cheeks together.

He pulled the covers over his head. It bothered him that months ago what he would’ve seen as signs of weakness, he now saw as strength instead.

 

\--

 

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t still _angry_.

 

\--

 

Damian wasn’t sure how the hell they’d convinced Roy Harper to watch over Todd, but they did. He wouldn't be surprised if Lian was involved somehow. She and Todd had a common goal of murdering Damian, after all, and Harper had always loathed saying no to his daughter.

“He’s not going to get over his complex with you if he’s stuck in your shadow,” Harper told Grayson over speaker-phone. “It’ll do him good to be somewhere else for a change.”

“But Roy—”

“Seriously, Dick. Just back off for a bit, yeah? He’ll need your support when he’s in a better place, but right now’s not it. It took Ollie kicking me out to start working through my issues with him—no, don’t you start with me. Heroin’s not for the faint of heart.”

“Fine,” Grayson put his hands to his mouth and sighed. “Fine, you’re right. Just… he’s family. It doesn’t feel right handing him over to someone else.”

Harper snorted. “Bruce’s problem in a nutshell, Dick. Always trying to solve everything himself. Not to speak ill of the dead, but…”

“Just take care of him, Roy,” Grayson interrupted before the man could start ranting. “God knows we haven’t been able to.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Harper said after a beat. Then he said conversationally, “On a somewhat unrelated note, did you know zombie boy and Starfire never met face-to-face before? This morning he broke out of his cuffs and tried taking the cafeteria hostage ‘til Kory zapped him in the head.”

“He _what_?” Grayson was caught off-guard, as Harper likely intended. “Christ, I'm like the official apology-writer for the Batfamily; first Damian, now Jason. Watch Tim fuck something up  _halfway across the world_ and I'll have to play mediator again. Wait, what do you mean _face-to-face_.”

“Turns out Kory’s words didn’t turn red just to match her skin,” Roy sing-songed, before hanging up and leaving Grayson gaping like a fish at his cell phone.

Apparently, finding your soulmate excused you from even the most tedious of jobs. The next time Damian arrived at Titan Tower, he found that Starfire had taken a leave of absence from babysitting them to… babysitting Todd, apparently. With Harper as her violent back-up. Damian couldn’t help but feel like Koriand’r got the short end of the stick there.

In her place was a familiar blonde in a long-unused outfit.

“Well if it isn’t the hell spawn,” Artemis Crock drawled when the Batmobile pulled up to the front door. Batman even slid out of the car just to wrap the woman in a warm hug, like he hadn’t just seen her a few weeks ago when Damian’s argument with Wally had almost burnt the kitchen down. “Imagine my surprise when Star told me she’d actually been making _progress_ with you.”

“Damian’s changed a lot,” Grayson said, and Damian couldn’t decide if he should feel pleased or offended. “It’s been a rough couple of days…”

Understatement. They still weren’t talking.

“…but I know you’ll treat him right. Just. If he gets violent, don’t be afraid to smack him. And if anything happens, you have my number…”

“Alright, Daddykins,” Artemis laughed, not the least bit deterred when Grayson twitched at the word. “Stop being a helicopter parent and go do your fancy Bat things. Shoo, shoo.”

Damian watched Grayson hop back into the driver’s seat and reluctantly pull out of the driveway. He didn’t _want_ to be angry at the man. Really. But he couldn't help but wonder why Grayson had never told him himself. Had he not wanted to admit they were family, even if Damian had been an out-of-soulmate bastard?

Had he been ashamed?

“What crawled up your butt, esé?” Blue Beetle snarled after Damian almost sliced his head off in training. Starfire would have long intervened, but Artemis held a laissez-faire attitude towards babysitting. She let Lian get away with bloody murder whenever they’d stayed over hers and Wally’s. “You can’t just—dios mio! Cut that _out_!”

“Wow, I’m not fighting that,” he heard Logan mutter from the sidelines. Damian flipped out of the way of Reyes’ next plasma beam only to find himself caught by the wrist. Reyes slammed him so hard into the ground he lost his breath.

“You don’t usually make rookie mistakes like that,” Blue Beetle crowed over him, and dodged out of the way when Damian scrabbled onto his feet. “Your anger’s making you sloppy.”

“Don’t goad him,” Artemis called out, bored. “He’s been pissy since he found out Dick and Bruce used to bang.”

“They used to _what_ ,” Reyes said.

“ _Batman_ and _Nightwing?_ ” Logan yelped.

“They’re soulmates,” Raven said, ignoring her teammates’ traumatized expressions. “Tim’s mentioned it before, Garfield, weren’t you paying attention?”

“I thought he was _kidding_!” Logan transformed into a green robin and flew circles around Raven's head. He settled onto her shoulder and twittered excitedly into her ear, until she obviously had enough and flicked him onto the floor. Beast Boy transformed back to his humanoid form and flopped onto his stomach. “I mean, he’d been saying something about waiting before taking your soulmate relationship further and I kind of zoned out after he started getting technical… _holy mother of OW!_ ”

Damian landed on his feet and glared down at Logan clutching his face. He would have kicked him again if Raven didn’t use her power to levitate him up into the air.

“That’s enough, Damian,” she said evenly, the traitor. “Garfield’s my responsibility. I’ll handle him.”

Damian bared his teeth at her. “I can handle him myself! And this is a family matter not for public debate. If any of you breathe a single word about Father or Grayson again, _I will end you_!”

“Okay, okay, I see someone needs a time-out,” Artemis sighed. She stood up from her chair and stretched. “Time for lunch, kiddies, come on. You too, hell spawn. Better get to the kitchen before Wally loses track of Bart again and we’re short a fridge’s supply of food.”

(“What?” Reyes scowled at his teammate’s pointed looks. Kid Flash only ever shirked his sidekick duty to come talk Reyes’ ear off, which made him inadvertently responsible for their food shortages. “You think I can stop him? I can’t even stop my own _scarab_ , you think Bart’s gonna listen to me?”)

“I hate you all,” Damian growled. Raven still hadn’t put him down, and he wriggled about mid-air trying to escape her psychic clutch. “ _Hate you_ _all!_ ”

“I gotta take a picture of this for Dick,” Artemis said gleefully as she took out her phone. Damian threw a dagger at her head.

 

\--

 

(“How’d you know,” Damian asked Raven later while cleaning a nasty gash in his arm. Raven didn’t offer to heal it, which spoke volumes about her disapproval. “It wasn’t just the Drake thing.”

“An empath can read a subject’s feelings—past, present, even future at times.” Raven reached up and grasped something invisible in the air. “Which means we can see connections, even when others can’t.”

“Oh.” A beat. “Can you see my connection?”

“Of course.”

“Any thoughts, or is that against your code?”

“Not against—just unwise,” Raven put her hand down. “But I wouldn’t worry, Damian. You’ll meet him soon. Also, Batman’s waiting for you downstairs.”

“I'll meet him in Gotham,” Damian clarified, and didn’t know how he felt when she nodded. Anticipation. Dread. Confusion, most obviously, because the last thing he needed during his shitshow with Grayson was _soulmate drama_.

“Do I even want to know?” Grayson showed him the photo Artemis had snapped of Damian dangling in mid-air. Damian scowled and turned away, because Grayson was a lying liar who lied and he wanted nothing to do with him.

Batman just sighed at Damian’s continued silent treatment and started the car.)

 

\--

 

Later that night, he wandered downstairs and found Grayson asleep in his chair before the monitors. He hadn’t even taken off his cowl. Damian scowled at him ferociously. It wasn’t _fair_.

Grayson wrinkled his brow when Damian clambered into his lap.

“Dami…?”

“Were you ever going to tell me?” the boy asked, not bothering to watch where his knees and elbows went and inwardly chortling at how Grayson winced. “Or were you going to keep it secret forever?"

“It's habit,” the man just huffed, which wasn't the answer Damian had been looking for. Grayson didn’t attempt to dislodge him, and Damian didn’t attempt to move him. He just… sat there watching Grayson sleep. He even put his hand right in front of Grayson’s face, just to feel his breath warming his palm.

Then he climbed off, nodded to himself, and then roundhouse-kicked the chair—Batman and all—across the room. Grayson yelped when he crashed into the far wall and tumbled into a caped heap on the floor.

“Alfred’s going to yell at you if you sleep here,” Damian called out scathingly, and stomped upstairs before Grayson’s bewildered expression could sort itself out.

It wasn’t fair. Grayson was _his_ , even if he’d been Father’s first. It galled him to realize that half his ire stemmed from wanting to keep the man all to himself. It galled him further to realize how much it scared him—the idea that Father may return one day, and when that happened, Grayson…

Well, Grayson might not care about Damian as much anymore.

Only children worried about these sort of things. Damian wasn’t a child. It was therefore completely illogical to be upset over theoretically impossible emotions, except he _was_.

He waited in his room until he heard Grayson shuffle up the stairs. When the man went into the bathroom to brush his teeth, Damian slunk through the door and stood by the bed.

“Why don’t you hate me?” he quietly asked Grayson when he came out. He clasped his hands behind his back and raised his chin, because al Ghuls—and Waynes, he supposed—didn’t cower. Grayson didn't even look surprised. He bent down so he was at Damian’s eye-level and put warm hands on his shoulder.

“You’re Bruce’s,” he said quietly, “and you’re _mine_. You’re my family, Damian, and I'm not ashamed of that. It's not your fault I didn't tell you about us; it's mine and Bruce's and bad habits rolled in one. But I’ll never hate you. No matter what happens, I promise.”

Damian looked deep into Grayson’s brilliant blue eyes. They were a lighter shade than Father’s, unique in the way they sparkled in the half-light. Then slowly, so slowly he could almost trick his pride it wasn’t happening, he leaned forward and put his face into Grayson’s shoulder. The man wrapped his slender arms around Damian’s shoulders, so free and open with this kind of affection that Damian couldn’t stop the burn in his eyes.

He missed Mother—Talia—and her flowery, spicy perfume. He missed Grandfather’s proud smile, the rare upturn of lips he’d grace Damian for a job well done. And, more than anything, he missed Father and their lost chance to know each other. He missed how Father’s words were straightforward, how he handled crises with grace, how fiercely the man _loved_.

He missed him _so much_ because he’d been the first one to teach Damian love—who had poured his love into Grayson, who in turn poured love into Damian. Who shone a light on Damian and saw who he really was. A fighter. A son.

A Robin.

“You want to sleep with me tonight?” Grayson said, and Damian pulled back with a watery scowl.

“I am not a _child_ , Grayson,” he called out imperiously. “Do not treat me like one.”

“My apologies,” Grayson smiled, but walked Damian back to his room anyway. He brushed a hand through Damian’s hair when he settled in bed—so similar to how he’d stroke Father’s hair, and Damian found it absurd how much it comforted him—before quietly, calmly leaving the room.

He shut the door behind him, and Damian closed his eyes.

That night, he dreamed he could fly.

 

\--

 

“It’s the best choice I made, Mother,” Damian said quietly, sword-tip pressed to his doppelganger’s breast. “And if that makes me an enemy of the al Ghuls, than so be it.”

“So be it,” Talia echoed. The gray words on her chest were barely visible in the half-light, and Damian realized how disturbing it was.

They will always be gray, because no matter how many times Talia gasped awake from the Pit, her soulmate was still dead. She'd excised her from her life with a single stroke: leaving no connection to a world that might be dark, yes, but strangely marvelous too. It was that thought that drove Damian’s vicious passion throughout the fight.

It was that thought that held his tongue when everything was over, and he’d spotted the unfamiliar Kon-El hovering by Drake’s bedside. His red soul-words shimmered beneath his shorn hair. _We’re friends_ , the words declared, and from the indulgent way Kon-El was looking at Drake it was more than true.

He hadn't really thought of what Drake's lost soulmate had been like. Conner Kent's strength and passion, however, seemed to fit well with Drake's intelligence. Even if the teenager was a clone.

Whatever Damian thought of clones—first Father, and then himself, both of which had been awful experiences—he had to admit that Drake looked brighter with this one by his side. Then again, Drake looked so different overall after gallivanting across half the globe. The tan and the new costume were throwing him off.

“He’s alive, Kon,” he heard Drake whispering to Superman’s clone like a confession. He clasped Kon-El’s hands with his own, tangling their fingers together with such ease he made Grayson look like a stiff prude. Damian was embarrassed just spying on them. “Bruce is _alive_ , and we can get him back.”

“Of course you will,” the clone said. “After you rest a bit, Tim.”

“I’m _fine_.”

“You’re beat up halfway to Sunday,” the clone informed him. “And Alfred’s threatened me with kryptonite if I snuck you out before dinner.”

“Of course Alfred’s in on this,” Drake sighed. After a long enough moment that Damian considered abandoning his surveillance, Drake moved again—this time to draw the clone close enough to press their foreheads together.

“Missed you _so much_ ,” Drake mumbled, and Damian had to finally look away when the clone’s face softened. Drake shifted forward so he could press a kiss to the other boy's lips. “ _Fuck_ , Kon, I missed you.”

Despite the potential for years worth of blackmail, Damian decided to leave them alone. There were some lines he wasn’t comfortable crossing anymore, even for false sons like Drake and false people like Kon-El.

For all of Drake's despair those first few months, there was so much _joy_ in having his soulmate back. Damian's words to Raven repeated in his head over and over again. _Perhaps it's better if we don't meet at all._

He rubbed the back of his neck as he slipped into the hall.

 _HELLO._ The words there were as regular and mundane and black as ever. Who knew when the hell he’d meet the other end of this connection. If he wanted to meet him, and what he'd do when he did. One thing he hadn’t considered before, however, was to whom _HELLO_ could be directed to.

Not _Hello Mr. Wayne_ , or _Hello sir_. Just… _HELLO_. Like his mysterious soulmate was talking directly to his very self. To Damian Wayne. The thought was as terrifying as it was exhilarating.

 

\--

 

(He and Drake still fought. That wouldn’t change. But Grayson was better equipped to deal with their conflicts than Father was.

“Tim, can you _please_ ,” he said, exasperated, when the Red Robin kept throwing verbal jabs at Damian. Damian, whose temper had drastically improved these past few months, felt the last vestiges of his patience quickly fading. “Damian’s done a good job being Robin. I know he’s more than capable of executing this plan himself.”

“But Dick—”

“And I expect better behavior from you,” Grayson finished putting the last nail in Drake’s coffin. Drake visibly deflated.

“Fine,” he said, turning to grab his bo-staff from the weapons pile. “But I’m _not_ picking up the slack if he runs off.”

“Like I would need your help, Drake!” Damian called after him. Drake lobbed a birdarang at him. Damian countered with a throwing knife.

Grayson put his head in his hands and groaned, even when a smoke bomb narrowly missed the tips of his bat-ears and landed right onto Damian’s enraged head.)

 

\--

 

It was rare for a local case to turn his stomach. It dug itself into Damian's core and hollowed him out, unrepentant even as he finished vomiting and pressed his forehead against the brick wall.

"Robin," Batman said, concerned, but he'd brushed him off with a hand-wave.

"I'll make whoever did this pay," Damian whispered. These were _kids_. Kids without the League training Damian had, who couldn't defend themselves from every one of those vicious cuts and had probably screamed themselves hoarse for hours. It would have been like agony succumbing to their wounds.

Damian would know. He'd been an expert at killing and torture once, in what felt like a whole other life.

 

\--

 

He wasn't _ready_.

 

\--

 

“Hello,” a redheaded boy said, hands coolly tucked in his pockets like he wasn’t wandering about some creepy neighborhood in the middle of the night. Damian twitched when his neck burned for some reason, like he’d gotten bitten by a fly.

“Hey kid,” Damian said irritably. “It’s not safe to wander around this area alone.”

And then the redheaded boy just—just blinked at him. And then he _laughed_.

“I knew you couldn’t have been that much older than me,” he said, even as Damian visibly bristled. He’d come here against Grayson’s explicit instructions to wait for intel, because the longer Batman and Robin dallied the more likely some other child would get snatched up. Like this one.

“Go home,” he told him, but the redheaded boy just gave him an unimpressed frown.

“ _You_ go home."

“I know what I’m doing. Don’t have time looking after you, too.”

“Yeah? Could say the same thing to you,” the boy volleyed back, and Damian bared his teeth at him. With neither of them backing down, they grudgingly approached the dumpsite together. Damian needed to lose him fast. Not if he wanted to avoid another Grayson lecture on _responsibility_ and _secret identities_.

 

\--

 

“Hello,” the redheaded boy said again when he spotted Damian brawling outside the cage he’d locked him in. Damian winced. He’d had to do it—the boy _knew_ , he’d figured out he was Robin, and Grayson was going to ground him until Drake graduated _college_. And also because that prickling burning was back. Not a fly bite. It was too widespread, and covered the back of his neck…

…where his soul-word was.

Damian stumbled and almost got his arm chopped off as a result. Zsasz was alarmingly good—better than Damian?—and he would’ve.

He could’ve.

But then that boy had escaped his cage somehow, because there he was yanking Zsasz right off of him. Growing Bane-like big and throwing the villain about the ring while the rich assholes betting on them jeered from the sidelines. Damian recovered enough to join in the fray, which had the added bonus of further igniting Mister Red-and-Angry’s incessant rage.

“Don’t kill him,” the boy—man? monster? whatever he identified as in this form—growled before Damian could deal the final blow. He had better moral scruples than Robin. Of course he did. Damian sliced into Zsasz’s spinal cord instead, which was more than what the bastard deserved.

When Grayson found them, the redheaded monster was still a redheaded monster and was clenching-unclenching his fists over Zsasz’s dumping ground. With his back turned, Damian could finally see damning proof with his own two eyes: on the boy’s right, veiny leg were the exact words Damian had said earlier that day. They were written haphazardly, like someone had been flabbergasted at the idea of writing on something other than a flat surface.

Appropriate, since Damian had no idea what to do about his soulmate either.

 _He wasn't ready_. He was _ten_. He felt too raw and exposed and… dangerous so soon after his defection from the League. Instinct overpowered him. His fingers itched snap the boy's neck with his hands and amputate the connection once and for all. To fulfill his lifelong duty (his promise to Grandfather, to rule their kingdom together.)

(Except Damian wasn't the al Ghul scion anymore. There was no kingdom to rule.)

Only the deeper, half-hidden part of him that the Batfamily had dragged out kept his fists by his side. Because despite how much pain Drake and Grayson had gone through in losing their soulmates, it was obvious how much their love lit up their lives. Damian had already realized in hindsight how happy Grayson had been at Father's side.

And here, he had the chance to _finally_ have someone of his own.

Once the case was closed, Damian began sneaking out. He tracked Colin Wilkes down to the St. Aden’s Orphanage, the one close by Todd’s old hunting ground. Surveillance revealed that Wilkes was quieter and meeker in his civilian life. That was, until something set him off. Damian discovered how violent Wilkes could be even without tapping into his literal monster; good, he approved.

“The Cycle of Abuse,” Damian presented to his soulmate once he’d finally convinced him to leave those iron-wrought gates. Wilkes, who was otherwise a suspicious little twerp, put far too much trust in Damian's Robin title. It had worked in his favor this time, though, so he was willing to let it go.

Wilkes was suitably impressed at the motorbike, and Damian beamed at him. He even gave him a few driving lessons the next time they met, though Damian probably wasn’t the best teacher and Wilkes had a tendency to either shut down or lash out when upset.

How they managed to get Abuse on the bike and roaring about the roads, he didn’t know. But they did. That was the amazing part, really, how things managed to come together against all odds.

“Hey kid,” he called out when he caught sight of Wilkes lurking by the warehouse. “It’s not safe to wander this area alone.”

Wilkes gave him a toothy grin: half genuine joy and half troublemaking fun. “Just get on the bike, Damian.”

And Damian—in a move more befitting of Grayson—leapt onto the back of the bike and wrapped his arms around Abuse’s thick neck. The other boy revved the engine a few times before taking off—both of them giggling like madmen all the way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_epilogue_

 

Dick had done a better job with their family in mere months than Bruce had in the entirety of his career. It’d been the first things he told his boy once Dick finally blinked awake after surgery.

“Perhaps it would be best if you continued as Batman,” he began, which was when Dick unceremoniously lobbed a cup at his head.

“ _No_ ,” Dick pointed an accusing finger at him. “You don’t get to do that. You’ve been _gone_ for months and we thought you were dead, and if there is a time we need you to stick the fuck around, it’s _now_.”

“Damian’s chased me out of your room twice.”

“Damian’s a possessive brat,” Dick rubbed his eyes with a hand. “But he still needs you. _I_ need you. Bruce, please.”

Bruce considered Dick for a long moment. He just… he wasn’t sure where he fit in here, now that the family had obviously moved on without him. Dick, who was always able to read him so well even half-drunk on pain-meds, tugged on his sleeve. 

The older man gently lowered himself beside him on the cot and smoothed a large hand down Dick’s arm. He’d missed this. Had ached for it every moment he spent lost in time, with the blue words on his arm glaring up at him accusingly. This was the longest he’d gone without seeing Dick _ever_.

Even when they’d been fighting so fiercely the younger man had _run away to a different city_ , Nightwing had always dropped in once or twice a month. Even if it was to pick a fight. Their recent truce had spoiled him even more. He’d started taking for granted Dick’s haphazard way of sleeping, like a wriggling warm koala-octopus that whined every time he tried to leave.

It had been endearing until Bruce actually did leave—seemingly for good.

"Bruce..." Dick started, voice sounding alarmingly wet, when they were interrupted.

“Father! Release Grayson at once!” He blinked and turned to see Damian storm into the room, a look of sheer fury on his face. Bruce saw Dick forcing a more cheerful expression. “If he is to properly recuperate from his brain surgery, he must lay flat on his back. Not—not be jostled around as you are doing right now. Your emotional outbursts are clearly affecting your judgment, and I demand you _cease_.”

“Damian, that's enough,” Dick said in a teasing tone he would’ve never used before Bruce’s apparent death. He shifted in Bruce’s arms and stretched out his free hand towards the boy. “You can cuddle with me too if you want.”

“I _do not cuddle_ ,” Damian bit out the same time Bruce muttered, “I doubt this bed will hold our combined weight.”

So Damian—who was far too much like Bruce sometimes—just stood there with his arms crossed, face dark like a thundercloud until Dick finally, _finally_ untangled himself from Bruce’s embrace. He waited until Bruce was all ready to leave before clambering up besides Dick himself.

“It’s more comfortable for me to watch over Grayson anyway,” he declared haughtily when Bruce raised an eyebrow. And then Dick—who’d been smiling indulgently at Damian—let out a laugh. It was a good laugh, one that Bruce had missed dearly. He leaned over and kissed Dick’s cheek goodbye, ignoring his son’s indignant squawk below him.

He’ll have to address Damian’s spoiled behavior soon, but not today. Not when so many emotions warred in his chest that he felt like they'd come spewing out his mouth at any moment.

 

\--

 

When Dick finally returned to the penthouse, Alfred cooked up a welcome-home feast in honor of them both. Friends and family poured out of the dining room, even those Bruce hadn’t seen for months before his demise. He even caught sight of Jason, of all people, sipping sparkling cider in the corner of the room and making a face at Starfire fawning over Dick’s bandages. Ollie’s boy, the Red Arrow, elbowed him and replaced his cider with something… stronger. Jason tipped the whole glass back in one gulp and then gave the Red Arrow a familiar, toothy grin.

In that moment, Bruce almost saw the Jason he’d once known.

It shocked him so badly he spilled his drink. 

Bruce went to the kitchen to wash the stain out of his dress-shirt and spotted Alfred in the doorway. He was surprised when his old friend broke character to sweep him up into a fierce hug—fiercer than most people would think if they didn’t know Alfred at all.

“This constant death and resurrection is bad for my heart,” Alfred said stiffly upon releasing him, not realizing how true those words were for Bruce, too. “But I’d willingly suffer a heart attack if it meant you were truly back, Master Bruce.”

“No one is suffering any heart attacks,” Bruce told him, trying to keep the alarm out of his voice. At Alfred’s age, these kinds of jokes were less jokes and more of an actual possibility. Alfred threw him an offended look.

“Honestly, Master Bruce,” the old Englishman sniffed. “Like a simple heart attack could stop me.”

“Who’s having a heart attack?” Dick suddenly popped out of the crowd. Someone had put a flower wreath on his head, and his drink looked more like goo than anything edible. “Are you out of your medication, Alfie?”

“No one is having a heart attack!” Alfred scolded them both. “I’m perfectly fine. Never better. Now shoo, I need to wipe down the kitchen!”

“Why does he even say things like that,” Dick sighed and led Bruce away by the elbow. He shivered at how his words burned under Dick’s familiar touch; years later and that warmth still made him want to get down on his knees. “We’d all drown in a mess of dusty rooms and starvation and bat poop if Alfred left.”

“Don’t say that,” Bruce frowned. “Or _my_ heart’ll give out.”

“Not that old yet, old man,” Dick grinned at him, cheeky and beautiful and _fake_. Dick had a dozen different smiles, and Bruce knew all of them. “Also—have you seen Damian? He’s raided your weapons stash and I’m not sure what he took. Nothing that can kill anyone, though. I’ve checked.”

It said a lot about Bruce’s life that he found that sentence reassuring rather than alarming. Speaking of, he _hadn’t_ seen Damian that night.

In fact, he wouldn’t see hide nor hair of his son until after the guests had either left or bunked down in a guest room. Dick was helping Alfred clean up the mess of cups and plates and still-unidentifiable goo off the floor when Damian burst into the room.

“You’re home!” he beamed at Dick—and then closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around Dick’s waist. Bruce was so stunned at this display of affection he missed Dick’s frown.

“Where have you been hiding?” Dick brushed dirt off of Damian’s collar. “And why do you smell like fertilizer?”

“I was… gardening.”

“You don’t garden,” Dick told him.

Damian glowered. “I was _training_ in a garden.”

“Yes, I'm sure if enemies attacked you'll be able to knock them out four different ways with a rake.”

“Of course I could do that,” Damian wrinkled his nose in a very familiar Wayne-family way. He batted Dick’s hand away from his collar. “Not that that's what I meant. Stop spouting _nonsense,_ Grayson. You’re home from that awful hospital. When can we go back on patrol?”

“We’re not done talking about your _gardening_ ,” Dick said in such a paternal tone that Bruce couldn’t help but smile. Alfred, who’d stopped collecting plastic cups to watch their ridiculous banter, just raised a brow at Bruce’s expression.

Bruce waited until Damian had sulked his way out of the room. He wrapped a hand around Dick’s waist the moment they were alone, tipping the younger man’s head back to kiss him. Dick went willingly, hand coming up to cradle Bruce’s jaw. God, he’d missed this—the easy way the younger man fit in his arms, the familiar taste of his mouth, the faint scent of his shampoo.

He would’ve taken his welcome-home kiss much sooner if there hadn’t been company. Old habits were hard to break, even if their soul-bond was a poorly kept secret amongst their friends.

“Hope that's not all you've got,” Dick laughed when they parted, blue eyes twinkling with something between mirth and longing. They weren't good with words, but Bruce was fluent in reading Dick Grayson. Dick had been holding back his hurt all day; because as much as Bruce had missed the man while stuck in the past, Dick had thought Bruce was _dead_.

He settled a hand over Dick's, the one rubbing circles along his jaw.

"I'm back," he managed to say, and physically ached when Dick's bright smile crumpled at the edges. When Bruce gently pried his hand away from his face, the smile collapsed. The younger man took a shaky breath and looked away: he never liked Bruce seeing him cry.

"You died," Dick said in a quiet voice.

"Lost in space-time."

"You _died,"_ Dick repeated, the anger he'd been holding back cracking through his voice like a whip. He clenched his fist like he was going to punch Bruce in the jaw he'd just been stroking so lovingly before, and Bruce knew he'd deserve it.  "Of all the _goddamn_ stupid things you've done, Bruce! Do you know—do you know how fucking hard it was to see my words go _gray_?"

"Dick," Bruce said helplessly when the younger man shoved him violently backwards. Dick pressed his palms to his eyes and took a deep breath. Then another. Bruce waited until the near-inaudible sobs quieted and the younger man regained his composure. Then, he approached him like he would a frightened animal.

Dick let Bruce fold him into his arms easily, burying his face into the crook of Bruce's neck. Just like he used to do when Bruce hurt him with callousness, not intent, all the way from childhood to adulthood. He liked holding him this way, even if he also felt guilty.

"I'm back," he repeated, because the words he knew Dick needed to hear—"I missed you" and "I'm sorry" and "I love you, I love you"—were so caught in his throat he could barely breathe. He couldn't say them.

Thankfully, Dick was ceaselessly forgiving. He let out a sigh and slowly relaxed in Bruce's arms, and it was only then that the older man felt something unclench in his chest.

"Welcome home," Dick said in a soft voice, and wound his arms around Bruce's shoulders in an obvious bid to be picked up. No matter how big he's grown, Bruce still had no trouble sweeping the man into his arms. Dick carded slender fingers through Bruce's hair while they went up the stairs.

He placed his head on Bruce's shoulder, closing his eyes with a small smile on his face.

 

\--

 

Damian kept disappearing. This would be of some concern for the average wealthy family in Gotham; for a crazy ensemble of vigilantes like the Batfamily, this was a crisis.

Except Bruce knew exactly what Damian was doing. The unexplained criminals showing up hogtied in front of the police station was less of a clue and more of a confession. Dick had even warned him when Bruce had presented a temporary schedule shift to accommodate Nightwing's—Batman's? That wasn't clear, but it was less confusing to use Dick's traditional alias—healing brain injury.

Tim and Dick would work with Lucius on wrangling Wayne Enterprises back into shape; the girls would work overtime to cover the Batman’s and Robin’s normal patrol; and Bruce would resume his Batman duties for the Justice League. This left Damian with nothing to do, because no one other than Dick was capable of watching over him.

They should have known a list of rules wouldn’t stop him.

Bruce tried formulating a plan of attack in his downtime, except he had no downtime. The Watchtower was a minefield of heroes interrupting whatever he was doing to gush at him. After enough awkward, intrusive questions, he finally had enough and locked himself into a broom closet.

It was a spacious, well-ventilated broom closet, but a broom closet nonetheless.

“Bruce,” Clark’s voice called out from the other side. “I know you’re in there.”

Bruce kept typing into his wrist-tablet and ignored him. If Damian was going out on patrols by himself, he likely had a temporary base of operations where he could store his gadgets away from the adults' prying eyes.

“The door’s not made of lead, Bruce. I can _see_ you.”

“ _What.”_ Bruce bit out when he finally yanked the door open. “I needed a space where I could focus, Clark. Don’t bother me.”

“You were hiding,” Clark corrected. “Jesus, I forgot how much of a recluse you are. You know Dick actually _ate in the cafeteria_ with everyone else? And—wait for it.” Clark opened his eyes comically wide. “He even _talked to people_.”

“I hate you,” Bruce informed his best friend, and Clark just laughed.

The Kryptonian made it up to him by being a godsend of pertinent information. “Gossip,” Clark corrected again, and then held his hands up at Bruce’s glare. “Alright, alright, I’ll stop. So what is this about Damian?”

“He’s disappearing for hours at a time,” Bruce admitted. “We think he’s patrolling by himself. Which is dangerous.”

“Huh,” Clark rubbed his chin. “You know, with the monitors being able to track just about anyone…”

“We are not abusing monitor duty to track down my _son_.”

“What else would you use it for?” Clark pulled an unhappy Bruce towards the module. “It’s my shift, you know, and it’s been a slow day. I’m sure everyone will understand if you want to find a ten-year old kid with a habit of vanishing once in a while. What if he’s in danger? Or doing drugs?”

“Damian is not _doing drugs_ ,” Bruce huffed, but was sufficiently swayed. It was the only explanation for why he let Clark toggle the controls so they could latch onto Damian Wayne (Robin V, designation B32; Dick had a permanent tracker sewn right into Damian's domino mask) and his coordinates.

“St. Aden’s Orphanage,” Clark said. He zoomed in as close as their futuristic satellite technology could allow. “Is there any crime happening there?”

“No, there isn’t,” Bruce frowned at the screen. He’d expected to see him beating up criminals, not lounging about an orphanage. Just then, he noticed Damian and an unidentified boy—red hair, that’s all he could see—slipping out the back and scurrying down a few blocks.

And then the boy suddenly transformed into a Bane-like beast; hopped onto a motorbike with Damian in tow; and _then_ they were beating up criminals. Together.

“Who is that,” Bruce jabbed at the creature on the screen, mind already working overtime.

“I honestly have no idea,” Clark said. He sounded baffled. “But… at least he’s not patrolling alone?”

Bruce resisted the urge to kick Clark in the shin, because such behavior was unbefitting a man closing in on forty. Also because that would be the equivalent of kicking a steel wall, and Bruce had better things to do with his life. Like finding out _what his son was up to_.

Bruce spent the rest of the day working through his memories of Bane and his venom and redheaded boys. It took him an embarrassingly long time to remember the right case. Something about the Scarecrow, Hush, and their awful plan to inject Bane’s Venom into children. The most notable one he’d rescued had been a redhead.

Colin Wilkes.

A quick search confirmed that Wilkes still lived at the St. Aden’s Orphanage. It seemed like the Venom’s effects had been permanent enough for him to don the cap of a proper Gotham vigilante while Bruce had been gone.

Damian’s bad influence, no doubt. Bruce wanted to put his head in his hands. He hadn’t predicted this issue. Why would he? Damian hated associating with children his own age… except this boy, for some reason.

Colin Wilkes. Interesting.

 

\--

 

(“He goes by the name Abuse," Dick told him when he phoned for intel. For some reason the younger man was squatting right outside the boardroom, as opposed to participating in a meeting inside like he was supposed to. "He and Damian took down Zsasz together when I _specifically_ told Damian to stay at home. Stubborn brat. I wonder who he gets that from?"

"You," Bruce said, and Dick made a face at him. "What are you doing."

"Sulking in the corridor, obviously. Tim kicked me out for disrupting the meeting."

"Who do I have to apologize to," Bruce sighed, and blinked when Dick clapped his hands and crowed. "What?"

"I'm not the apology-writer anymore!" Dick said without any explanation, which Bruce took as the end of their conversation. He made a gesture that meant he was signing off and turned back to the coordinates he'd written down at the Watchtower. Even if Batman took his time, he'd arrive in fifteen minutes.)

 

\--

 

Bruce waited until the boys drove into the warehouse and parked the motorbike neither of them were close to old enough to drive. Then he dropped down from the ceiling. Damian threw a knife at him reflexively, which Bruce easily blocked.

“Damian,” he said in a dark growl. The boy straightened up immediately at his tone, guilty but also… petulant.

“Father,” he acknowledged stiffly.

Colin Wilkes, who’d jumped in shock when Batman had appeared out of nowhere, finally came back to himself. His large green eyes practically sparkled. “Mr. Batman! I—wow—it’s an honor to meet you! The original you, I mean. Not that the new Batman’s not great, but you’re the one I met first—”

“Colin,” Bruce softened his tone slightly. “I see you’re doing… alright.”

Colin opened his mouth as if to explain, but was interrupted by Damian clamping onto his arm and putting himself between the two.

“How do you know Colin?” he demanded, bristling like an angry cat. That had Bruce raising a brow. Not just a convenient ally, then. Damian only ever got possessive over things he cared about, like caring about something or someone meant he owned it.

(Which wasn’t true, but Bruce had shamefully let Dick handle that particular life lesson. God knows he himself wasn’t qualified.)

“He rescued me from the—from Hush,” Colin said over Damian’s shoulder. “The Batman. It’s why I wanted to fight bad guys too. Be a superhero.”

“Yes,” Bruce conceded. “But I hadn’t realized the Venom’s effects were permanent.”

Colin shrugged. “Abuse is okay. He’s big and not scared of things, and so I’m not as scared of things either.”

“You don’t need to be scared of things,” Damian turned and looked the other boy in the eye. “I’ll protect you.”

To Bruce’s surprise, the redhead just cocked his head. “I don’t need protecting.”

“Yes you _do_.”

“Abuse takes care of himself,” Colin raised his chin. “He heals fast and looks cool—”

“You taped those bandages onto yourself for no reason, you liar—”

“—and if anyone needs protecting, it’s you.”

“What!” Damian said indignantly. Bruce cleared his throat and watched with interest when his son froze, like he’d forgotten Bruce was there entirely.

He watched with even more interest when Damian’s dark skin reddened. He faced Bruce again with a surly, assassin snarl plastered onto his face.

“Grayson’s incapacitated and the Fatgirl and Black Bat don’t know this area well. Colin and I have been picking up the slack.”

“And why didn’t you inform us of this?” Bruce asked mildly.

“I knew you’d disapprove,” Damian said. He glared up at him. “But we can do it. I don’t need a babysitter and Abuse looks enough like an adult—”

“You are both _ten years old_ ,” Bruce cut in. “No matter who looks like what. And both of you are going home. Colin, I will drop you off by the orphanage.”

“But Mr. Wayne…”

Bruce startled badly. Damian couldn’t have crossed that line.

“He found out himself!” Damian said, looking scared for the first time this conversation. “And he hasn’t told anyone, Father. But—I—”

It wasn’t just rare to see Damian flustered. It was _impossible_ , and that cinched Bruce’s suspicions. Even more so when Colin, in an attempt to calm the other boy down, wrapped a hand around Damian’s nape.

Where Damian’s soul-word was.

Good lord, they were too _young_.

“Come back to the manor with me,” he relented after a long pause. Colin notably perked up at the prospect of entering his favorite hero’s residence. “We’ll talk about this there.”

Damian didn’t look happy, but Bruce expected nothing less. There was a reason Damian hadn’t told Dick of his continued rendezvous with Colin, or why he’d gone off on patrol without alerting any of his guardians. For once, however, Bruce allowed him these faults.

He understood more than most how possessive those feelings towards your soulmate were. He just hoped Damian wouldn’t make the same mistakes he did.

He hoped Damian would learn how to eventually let him go.

 

\--

 

(“Damian already found his soulmate?” Tim squawked when Dick broke the news. The teenager had just returned from his last WE meeting. He loosened his tie and threw it on the couch, then collapsed in a heap beside the former Robin. “He’s ten. _Ten_!”

“They’re kind of cute,” Dick mused. “I mean yeah, their dates so far are beating up criminals together, but who hasn’t done that at least once?”

“Oh my god,” Tim moaned. “You’re _right_.”

“Colin’s pretty behaved,” Dick said. Then again, everyone looked behaved next to Damian. “I think it’ll be good for Damian to have someone his own age to play with…”

“Who he doesn’t _have_ to share with others, like that’s healthy at all. Yeah, I get that,” Tim snorted. “But he’s _ten_ , he doesn’t even understand what that entirely means. Puberty’s going to be a mess with neither of them knowing what they’re doing…”

Tim trailed off and looked at Dick, who gave him a panicked look in return and swiveled around to stare at Bruce.

And Bruce—in a proper mature fashion befitting his title of Batman, Wayne patriarch and Master of the Bat-Clan of Gotham—picked up his newspaper and fled.

That conversation was years too early. _Decades_ too early. He was still getting over the fact that his son was soul-bonded with a boy who could hulk out like _Bane,_ for god’s sake _._ Bane had even broken his back that one time.

“He's not going to break Damian's back,” Dick yawned, stretching languidly in bed. Bruce had to admire his remarkable flexibility, the toned muscles of his waist and hips. Dick caught him looking and gave him a cheeky grin, the kind that meant Bruce was going to suffer in the next few minutes. “I’d be more concerned about Damian hurting Colin instead.”

“Not on purpose,” Bruce said, and then regretted it.

“They’ll be fine,” Dick said. He snuggled up to Bruce, hands suddenly everywhere, like he was memorizing Bruce's warmth by touch alone. Separation anxiety, perhaps, until he ran careful fingers down Bruce's soul-words and smiled when Bruce shivered. He traced them again, slower this time, and Bruce let out a hiss at how much each burning letter fueled his _wanting_.

Then, rather than continue what he started, the brat leaned over and turned off the light.

“We’ll handle whatever happens, B. I mean, you _literally_ came back from the dead," Dick's voice was very close to his neck.

“Of course I did,” Bruce said in an even voice. He knew he was being punished. “I’m Batman.”

Bruce felt rather than heard Dick laughing against him. This boy had always been too good for him: too bright, too confident, too self-aware to take Bruce's shit lying down. Bruce let the younger man bury his face into his shoulder, warm limbs tangling with his.

“Well _I’m_ Batman too, you know,” Dick whispered into his ear. “And I say we go to sleep.”)

 

\--

 

“You can come in,” Damian told the shadow hovering outside his window. He would’ve been more defensive if he hadn't recognized that silhouette, and was confident he could stop any funny business before it happened. Wilkes was sleeping in the guest room next door, after all. Not that Wilkes was a sitting duck, but this was _Damian’s_ home and was therefore his responsibility to defend it.

Even if that meant inviting creepy stalker shadows into the penthouse.

“Nah,” the figure drawled. “Just came to see for myself. Rumors has it you found your soulmate.”

“Rumor has it you did too.”

“Well duh,” Jason Todd said. And it really was Jason Todd—the closest Damian had seen of the man he’d spoken to on the docks that day. “How’dya think I’m _floating outside your window_.”

Ah. Damian knew he’d overlooked something.

“You can come in,” he allowed graciously. “I’m sure Father wouldn’t kick you out.”

“Of course he wouldn’t,” Todd snorted. “He’d probably greet me with open arms, all ready to welcome the prodigal son back… as long as I fall in line. Ain’t something I can take yet. Can barely take Kory frowning at me—ow!”

“We are sorry to bother you, Damian,” Koriand’r called out from below. Damian peered over the edge and confirmed that Todd was riding on her shoulders. Which was _hilarious_. “Jay’s been keeping tabs on you from the Watchtower; Roy and I are positive he’ll make proper contact soon.”

“I am _right here_ ,” Todd complained, and fumbled with a cigarette that meant he definitely wasn’t coming inside. Except Starfire threw a small beam at it and incinerated it into dust.  "Kory!"

"I'm going back to bed," Damian declared. Todd just nodded, though seemed somewhat disappointed that he couldn't talk to Damian anymore. Who knows. Perhaps they'd bond over shared traumatic League of Shadows stories and their mutual dislike of Talia al Ghul.

"Okay," Todd said. "Fine. Just—pretend this didn’t happen. You saw nothing. _I was never here_.”

“Is that a reference?” Damian narrowed his eyes at him as the Todd-and-Starfire duo slowly sank out of sight. He considered telling Father but couldn’t see the point. Even homicidal maniacs like Jason Todd deserved to figure things out at his own pace.

God knows Damian did.

He carefully, quietly shut the window. Then he padded out of his room and right into Wilkes’s, slipping in without bothering to be stealthy. He was impressed when Wilkes sat up immediately. Light sleeper.

“What’s wrong?” Wilkes said in his Abuse voice, already anticipating danger.

Damian waved him back down and crawled beside him. It was so very warm under the blanket, two bodies generating more heat than one. Wilkes slowly relaxed against his side. He scared so easily that Damian itched to go back in time and _slaughter_ whoever had put that look on his face. Except then they might not have met, and Damian wasn’t sure he could accept that.

Even if Colin Wilkes would’ve been happier without the Venom coursing through his veins.

Considering that, it was insane to think he'd been considering killing the boy himself a year ago. Forget going back in time to slaughter Scarecrow or Hush; he would have gone back in time to slaughter _himself_ if he'd made the wrong decision.

If he had chosen to kill Colin out of fear.

Wilkes—Colin—ruined his contemplation by saying, “Wait, are you scared?”

“I do not get _scared_ ,” Damian said indignantly. He jabbed Wilkes under his arm in punishment and smirked when the other boy yelped. “Just… go to sleep.”

“Okay,” Colin yawned. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”

“I don't need you to,” Damian muttered petulantly before dozing off. He felt warm and content and _soft_ —softer than he’d ever been before.

Soft enough to sink through the steel-enforced cage Talia al Ghul had once built around him, with no idea what was going to emerge on the other side.

And for once, Damian thought, that was okay.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading~


End file.
